Hello Folks,
Great home, Chris. Glad you have the snow and not me!
Attached are the parents of a cross I made stemming from the posts here a
couple of years ago. The cross is SOLAR FIRE X (THORNBIRD x unknown). It's
a bit of a side trip for me, but the posts made me curious. So now I've had
four seedlings bloom. The purpose of the cross was to see what kind of
appendages two SAs might yield and, primarily, to see if the trait could be
made more stable by stacking the parents. The seedling is very stable.
Nearly every bloom has the appendages and they are always very similar
appendage types. SOLAR FIRE didn't do that. The terminal bloom tended to
have those erupting spoons, but subsequent blooms dropped them as the photo
shows. The last blooms didn't have any. As it turned out SF didn't handle
the climate well and died after the first year here. The seedling has been
a strong grower and reliable bloomer as the clump photo taken yesterday
shows. The cross wasn't made with regard to growth habits or color. I was
a bit curious about the appearance aside from the appendages since both have
THORNBIRD as a parent.
I have photos of the first four seedlings from the cross. They may be it
since I've been in the house listening to large hail falling. Some stones
as big as half dollars. Not real thick, but combined with a hard wind
driven rain they were enough to cause damage. It will have to wait until
light for me to see just how much and how many pods bought it. I'll post
the seedling photos if there's interest here, but the one that bloomed this
morning will be out of focus because I didn't have enough light and
depending on how it fared with the weather, it may be the only photo I get
this year.
Donald Eaves
donald@eastland.net
Texas Zone 7b, USA
