I know - there are a FEW TEENY little differences... but it just amazes me. Makes me wonder if they should have like 15 different categories and have all the little variations in a category instead of naming everything individually. Oh well. That's part of the fun, huh? :-P

heres the three im trying to identify. the frustrating thing is that most pics online are not true to color! the three pics i posted above are pretty close. im thinking they are all optimaras. i dont really care what they are as long as they are pretty! ;)

heres another one im curious about:

Ah, that is why "they" tell you not to try and exhibit "self-identified" varieties. Nor sell them as named varieties.

Technically, anyone can register a variety, but, it is supposed to be an improvement over existing ones. Still, if they need to fill a 50 states series, or a quota of new varieties for a year, i guess producers aren't all that careful....

And then there are the "vanity registrations" - "look, see, i have registered my own hybrid!!!" (I aim to register a variety someday, but it ought to be a very nice one.... so, maybe in about 10-20 years ;-p )

You can see that Optimara Alaska is frilled and Alaska II (which would be the current one) is described as blue; Maine is also described as frilled but doesn't seem to show it as much in the photos; Maine II is described as having a purple edge. Would there be any reason to think you found an unregistered Kent Stork plan somewhere without a tag? (Bounty Hunter). I bought Optimara Tennessee II and it is described as ruffled and it looked exactly like the photo on the Optimara page. Paul Bunyan is shown and described as a semidouble blue star. Little Cherokee is semimini and a fairly distinctive looking plant. It's semidouble to double. See the doubles?

It's not unusual for a I and II to look alike. Optimara has said that the AVSA won't alllow them to say "Improved"so they add the II. Again, Heritage Frolic is a double semimini and I doubt you'd find it in a box store. It's another distinctive plant - dark green, pointed, wavy, red back. Nebraska II - medium green, plain, glossy, hairy..

Sometimes you can't identify random violets. If you know they're Optimaras you have a chance. Either catch them when they're fresh or let them get blooming and growing well so they can see both the leaves and the blossoms. It also helps to give info as to where you got it.

I suppose there are some that look like each other but I've never owned two that I've actually confused. It's important to look at the whole plant, not just the blossom and to think about the situation. Did I really find a 1950 plant at Walmart? Probably not. Unless my Walmart has a very special arrangement with a grower, that would be highly unlikely.

Diana in PA

See the ones that I am trying to find info on didn't come from Walmart or Lowes or anywhere like that. Two were bought at a local small greenhouse, who also buys their plants from a local small nursery.. and the other plants were starts I got from my Mother in law, and she had them given to her by "someone who likes violets". So you see my pickle? I am nearly sure that they are optimaras... I spent some time on myviolet.com looking at all of the optimara violets and going back and forth between "possible" matches. I am 99.9% sure that I have several of them correctly matched.. I know - you are probably laughing at me. But I did my research and compared the descriptions and pictures with what was sitting right in front of me "Oh, that one has a red backed leaf... hmm... does mine? No it doesn't. OK, let's look around again." :-)

Thanks for your input! I'm having fun with this! ;-)

Shihtzu - I totally agree. I think it is another marketing ploy and to us 'commoner's' the differences in the plants are negligible. I have bought plants and the put them on the Optimara ID forum on FB. They are super nice there. Although the plants are still technically NOID's, it does give you a place to go and some type of ideas on your plants.

There are other growers as well. Anthroflores (sp?) is another large one. Their website is not as easy to locate different types of AV's as the Optimara website.

carolyn - oh... anthroflores?? never heard of them! i have looked for the facebook site you mentioned but can not find it. what is the link? i know it doesnt really matter but its nice to have a probable ID for trades and such so people can get an idea of what my no id looks like. i will never show my violets! i just love them how they are. i got burned in the dog show world.... although i did enjoy showing rabbits when i was a teenager. maybe violet shows are more laid back like rabbit shows? who knows. :)

Did you post on the Optimara id FB page. They can often identify Optimaras, although not always. If you researched, then you would know if you had a semmini or a standard - which is it? How did you get that photo of Paul Bunyan that does not appear to be any Paul Bunyan?

At one time there seemed to be more attempts to identify Anthoflores but not now, although I did see one at our grocery store (it matched the unnamed one on their website - Harster). There are a few named ones that people collected at one point.

Optimaras are not a marketing ploy. They have been hybridizers for many, many years. Holtkamp introduced the first sticktite singles. They didn't register those plants but people bought them anyway.

You may well have noids unless you can match one up with an Optimara and ask them for an id or it is an especially distinctive looking plant. Even then, it may not be recognized. That is why it is important to keep the names and keep the names straight unless you really don't care at all. Some of the Optimaras (particularly) the older ones bloom with the tight "bouquet" in the center. They generally have sturdy bloomstalks. Later Optimaras may not have this habit but it was an early Optimara feature.

You are correct about the color. It's not only hard to photograph them yourself, it depends on how the person on the other end sees them. The identification tools (Optimara and FC2) can be very confusing at time as far as the photos and, in Optimara's case, sometimes the descriptions are completely at odds with the current version of the plant.

This ran on too long so I am going to tell you about 3 plants I had with no id and what happened there.

Diana

There certainly are a lot of violets out there that look nearly identical. There are over 10,000 registered hybrids, so it's bound to happen. Ever run into someone that looks eerily similar to you or someone you know? It's the same idea. The hybrids are quite likely to have been created using different plants and so contain a different genotype, even if their expression of those genes results in a similar appearance. Ideally, a new registration should be an improvement over others, but this doesn't always happen. Even using First Class 2 it is impossible to be familiar with all registered hybrids. Who could memorize everything that's been done before? Also, many hybrids only have descriptions and no picture in FC2. There are certainly some questionable hybridizers who register plants that shouldn't be, but most seem to try and adhere to the spirit of registration.

The frequently quoted "over 10,000 registered violets" is somewhat misleading because there is no way you can find a good percentage of them anywhere. Also when we say "look identical," sometimes we just aren't looking at the whole picture. Optimara id would like a photo showing the whole plant, possibly taken on a mirror so they can see the leaf backs, for instance. I'm certainly not saying you can identify every plant, but there are often likely to be some differences when we look closely. To be honest, Lyon's have started to look a lot alike to me lately. I assume there are some differences but I'm not willing to buy them all to find out exactly how they differ.

There are a few plants that are very distinctive and you recognize them even on someone's crowded shelf.

I think there have been a lot of mediocre plants registered over the years :). I've bought a lot of them. Did I ever buy two varieties that I kept confusing with each oher (in bloom). Well no I didn't, even though I sometimes think I keep buying the same blue and white plant over and over. They don't really look exactly alike. Even with the reds, which are not my thing - reds were all they had at Lowe's one day so I stood there and looked at them (all Optimaras) and you could tell that they were different varieties. These were rather shopworn, ratty plants but they didn't look alike. I've never paid much attention to the reds although I can now id O. Pennsylvania but there were about 4 varieties there. The blossoms have differences and so do the leaves. The leaves matter a lot. So does the size. If you have a small one, it's not a standard or vice versa.

Now that I have shoeboxes full of babies, I can often even id the baby plants because many of those don't look like the others (this is certainly not 100% but I now believe it when the Optimara rep said the workers could tell the plants by the leaves.) If you worked all the time with certain varieties, you would know them.

Don't think I'm suggesting that people should guess at plants. I'm not. I'm just saying that I don't really think there are so many that are exactly alike. As for the Anthoflores list, I spent a lot of time with it and I'm not sure it's very useful now. Someone once told me that Lowe's only sold Anthoflores so I kept trying to name my Optimaras as Anthoflores and it just didn't work very well... I did eventually get a couple of Anthoflores but I don't have them now. They had some nice plants. I agree with Karin that they gave up on trying to inform the public. They had some nice ones with girl leaves (they called them "curly"). The one I saw at the supermarket was the peachy thumbprint so they may have had some others that were less distinctive.

Don't put too much faith on one photo found on FB or the web or some random person's list either. I don't go hunting for errors but I've certainly found them. Just recently I spotted what appears to be R. Michelle with another name; Blue Owl and then I kept looking and realized it was The Martian; lots of errors on FB and I don't think anyone bothers to correct anything there. There are some strange ones in FC2 also. For Optimara, I would usually ask although the current ones may be more easily identified and ones like R. Cora and O. Modesty and R. Michelle. Tennessee was the spitting image of the one they had on the Optimara page right before the convention. This one has shown a tendency to birth mark though. I believe it is mostly semidouble. It was sitting here but I must have moved it. I had to start it over. Maui is disinctive too.

Diana

i should have named this thread "How to Make sense of No ID problems". :-P good posts everyone!

Hee, sometimes I feel there are only ten unique standard violets in the world (based just on bloom color)...I know I'm way exaggerating, but you get the point.

Thankfully there's variation in foliage and size as well.

There is a lot of variation in blossom type as well as colors too. I had another post and I think GW said "shut up, Diana" which wasn't such bad advice :) I'll post it later. It was about my hunt for id on a few violets and one was mom's double white over variegated (mentioned only briefly). Now I've seen Ma's White Elephant mentioned a lot, but I've had awful problems with Ma's and although it's a semidouble white over variegated foliage, it looks nothing like my mom's plant. I think if so many look alike, why can't I find one that looks anything like that?

Let me run through the house (not literally, lol). Optimara Texas - easy. Tommie Lou, easy. Fredette's Sweet Jenny, I think this one's pretty easy. Witch Doctor - well tell me who else looks like it? I don't know. Maverick's Faded Jeans. An Optimara myLove (myDesire) although Kent Stork has now released some that look similar to this line as far as blossoms or so it appears. It is a pansy though. We're still on one window, BTW.

Well wasps although some look much the same. Wizard's Blue Stones. Whatever yellow Senk's I have (I wonder if it is mismarked since it looks like they used in in Golden Autumn); Rhapsodie Cora; Optimara Chico, we can all pick him out; Yukako; Moonbeams; Kilauea; probably Red Rocket; Ness' Crinkle Blue; Heritage Frolic; Firebird; Feather; Ma's Ching Dynasty; I think probably Smitten Kitten. Probably some of the fantasies although that's not really my thing.

There - it's just a selection from one woman's house. Just the blossoms, not the foliage. Interlude - I want this one. That's more than 10 and I think most of them can be picked out by the blossoms. Maybe there's a Witch Doctor blossom clone out there but I'm not coming up with it. There are also the ones whose foliage looks like nothing else.

Of course if your vintage single 1950 grandma's pink violet happens to be a sticktite, then you are probably on the wrong track right away :). In fact, come to think of it, the one that looked like R. Michelle was being sold under a name listed as a 50's single pink. Hmmm. We need o learn a little. I keep learning new things.

Diana in PA

So... Diana, if you saw these pictures what would you id them as?? Please excuse the annoying "My Violets, more info" stuff below each picture. I put these here directly from one of my ideabooks, and it's obnoxiously placing that below each picture.

My Guess? I have no clue. Maybe Dresden Doll? Paul Bunyan?

My guess is Opt. Degas

My guess is Opt. Da Vinci

My guess is Opt. Acadia with this one...

Closeup of the previous picture...

My guess is Opt. Irene

My Guess is Opt. Kansas II based on one picture I saw on google where someone claimed theirs was a Kansas II, but I can not find any evidence that there IS a Kansas II

???? Opt Maine II maybe???

I think this one is Lonestar Helen Mahr... not sure though. Excuse the slightly sparse appearance... I just sent out leaves from this one to four different people in trades! :-P

Diana, you have a really good eye for identifying plants. You have helped me i.d. some of my Optimaras in the past.

Su, As for the I.D. of the one above, you would have to have the two live plants side by side to know for sure. As Linda once said, so many plants look very similar, that unless you know the genetics, you can't be sure. (That may have been a lot of leaves to take off at one time ... if the plant seems to wilt, you might want to remove the blooms to let it recover.)

As for plants grown by a local nursery, they may be licensed to grow Optimara, you can tell if they come in the orange plastic pot, even if they don't have a label.

At the Optimara website, I typed in my local zip codes to see what stores would come up for buying Optimaras. Interestingly, some BB stores came up, not the stores where I find them.

Joanne

Thank you, Joanne. Sometimes I can tell them but certainly not all of them. I had seen so many posts and photos with O. Millennia and Rita (I think Anika gets in there sometimes too although I believe it is pinker). Still with everyone's photos, it is confusing. At any rate I wanted what I had before and I believed it was Millennia so I ordered leaves from Selective Gardener. I now have Millennia :)

I have what I think is Rita but that one appears to be sensitive to the heat and I'm still messing with it. Maybe it's not really Rita.

I am currently growing one tagged "Not Chico" and maybe I will get it into bloom and see if Optimara can tell me what it is. Or what they are (I had a pot full when I got home and eventually looked at the leaves and realized they weren't just a crazy Chico).

I have gotten flak for saying that O. Manitoba is nearly the same color as Harbor Blue, but what happened was that I asked, "Is there an Optimara that looks almost like Harbor Blue?" because it was driving me crazy. A kind person said, yes, Manitoba was similar and that he had chose to grow O. Manitoba because it didn't take up so much space.

When I started, I had no idea that box store plants might have names at all but some nice people identified a few for me. I think I had O. Modesty, which is an easy one. Optimara didn't have as many in circulation as they do now. I had grown Optimaras before but in the early years, they came with names.

I get the notices from the My Violet site but they would only send for one zip code and I have to travel to get anything so I signed up under 2 emails. It's been hit and miss trying to get there and the one time I asked, they didn't seem to know anything about it.

Witch Doctor is a very distinctive plant but I suppose those are the exceptions that prove the rule?

Diana in PA

A quick note on Rita. I've read that this plant was developed at Holtkamp's German greenhouses under cool and shady conditions so it probably is heat sensitive.

I may have seen that too. Whatever this is doesn't care for the heat. Blue-eyed Russia didn't either (I'm too lazy to look up the Russian name). I managed to save the leaf though. Optimara Romance used to melt in the heat and I just gave up. I suppose I may have been able to keep it downstairs.

We only have some hot spells but it didn't take too much. Rita(?) seemed to be doing all right and I moved it and it just melted.

Diana in PA

Terrilou, Diana, Thanks for the info! I knew there was something special about that plant! I have a Rita, or what I think is a Rita, in a window that is getting a fair amount of indirect light. It is doing really, really well. I will have to see how it does as the season progresses.

I did not know that some O's liked cooler temps. That might be why some of my O's that I thought would last forever pooped out last summer. Maybe it was the heat.

Bump - Diana do you have any thoughts about the IDs of the pics I posted above? :-) Not the original pictures I posted, but the ones further down in the thread... the ones posted on Tuesday at 11:30. :-) Man, I wish you could "quote" things in this forum!

No, not really. Even when we can try to guess we like to have some idea of where/when the plant might have been acquired unless, as I said, it is one of the very few that really stand out. If it seems like an Optimara, you can follow their photograph rules and ask. Sometimes they can help. I wish we could quote too :)

Diana in PA

The first two... the two with dark leaves, one a pink the other a very deep purple... they were bought at Lowes and had Opt. wrapping. :-)

Hi Diana,

i see this topic come up often, mostly because the optima's are what we buy in the stores, but the hybridizers with mail order businesses have trained us to want to name them all

Hybridizers mix plants and genes so readily, that it is impossible to find any purity. For example, I read that at the Wranger series were developed by crossing Optimaras with another type of plant. So, essentially, the Wranglers are fancy Optimaras.

The genetic pool is so similar that sooner or later, one of the parents going back several generations will manifest. So, collecting is always going to be a hobby and not a scientifically exact process.

You have made a serious study of Optimara plants, and shared with the Forum. I really appreciate that. This has been such a helpful discussion. Optimara is in the business of constantly revising and improving and strengthening their line of plants. They are breeding and developing for "mass markets" to cover the world in a blanket of African Violets! So to them, it probably does not matter if they have blues and whites that are swirls, polka dots, that bloom all white in the summer and all purple in the winter. We have seen all of that here and on our shelves. So their philosophy, or business plan or R&D, whatever one wants to call it, is for more, better, and subtle diversity. They want mainstream plants for mass markets.

Diana, Yes, many of the Lyon's have certain similarities in their plant structure. I think I could tell a Lyon's from another.

Selective Gardener once explained that Optimara is developing plants for huge markets that anyone can enjoy. They produce a lot and retain the more common ones.

I was intrigued to read that Kent Stork came out with a new series, Diana.

Optimaras come to us in the stores. We can see what we are getting and it is already in bloom. We can pick out our own.

But with other hybridizers, we need to make an effort, we need to study what they have, then send for them and wait six months until their snow melts and hope they don't go out of business or they have not sold out their stock at conventions.

As Jeff Smith has said, hybridizers are developing for improved plants, not mere oddity or diversity.

I used to try to track down some that were vintage, but when I learned the original hybridizers families were not bothering to keep the older varieties going, I saw it as more of a hobby. vs. a business.

I found five new babies at the grocery store Grown by Woodhill greenhouse in Canada. Google the stock and am sure to have Id'd some of them. the White one Ontario was the easiest. Next was a red that I am certain is North Carolina. Then came the purples and blues and nope cant even begin to guess. and they only have like 40 kinds listed as types that they sell.

Oh well, I just went looking for a link to back up the post I wrote, and it (my post) is gone.

Anyhow, a few paragraphs in anutshell: "serious growers" tend to dismiss the optimaras. This is silly because I bet 8 out of 10 people get started in in "the hobby" through them. Those same people wonder why memberships are dwindling. Go figure.

My own experience going to a club meeting and admitting all I had was box store plants was quite discouraging, and I drive twice the distance to a different club now (I will get over myself at some point).

Joanne mentioned about optimaras and the general gene pool. If anyone is interested, the lists of the saintpaulia a ancestry project are quite interesting :)

Julia, The Woodhill website is way out of date. I don't think it has changed in three or four years. In fact, I picked up My Sunshine recently & thats nowhere on their site. Its best just to go to Optimara & try to ID.

Speaking of Wranglers, I would love it if they grew strongly like Optimaras. I know W. Canyon Echoes resulted as a cross between O. Colorado & Sunlit Sugar Plum but right now mine isn't growing with Optimara vigor. I think all my plants are struggling to come out of the winter doldrums.

I would like to see Optimara ID their plants but as its a money issue they won't. And its a win win situation for them because some buyers will go to their website & decide to buy some more plants. Even though Selective Gardener is supposed to be separate, they are still under the Holtkamp roof so bet they are in cahoots!

Terrilou, that just makes me sad. because i thought I had positive Id'd a few plants in my collection and now I must start over and do not even have time to look today.

Does the pink one have a red reverse on the leaves? Angelica says it has a red reverse. I'm also having trouble telling if yours is a star or a pansy. I think it looks like a pansy but can't be sure. Angelica says it is a star. Optimara Virginia seems to be another strong contender there.

The second may well be Kentucky. I would simply ask Optimara. Kentucky is a very nice plant and I think I passed it up at Lowes. There are just so many purples, blue-violets that is is better to let them try to call it, IMO. Kentucky has a red reverse but I suspect anything with such a dark leaf would have a red reverse.

I live with things like Degas(?) until I can grow them out and get a definite id or I give in and order from Selective Gardener. It was pretty whatever it was. Might have been Nebraska. Boy do the temps and conditions affect the colors on some of these bicolors and it's not just Optimaras either.

Diana in PA

part ii, optimara does i.d. their plants, but they can't for those bought in stores. Also, many are grown by local farmers, they have no time or ability to i.d. plants. They just grow them. they would need a huge staff and would charge $10 for an i.d.'s plant, not $3.

Diana, Genetic Gem resembles WitchDoctor in foliage and neither is easy to grow so not popular. I have both, they are pretty but stay small.

Su, Rosie, and others, the "short answer"is that identified plants an be ordered from selective gardener but for a lot more than what you pay for a NOID in a store. For about the same price as you would pay from any hybridizer. so the store bought plants keep us happy while we go about collecting others.

Optimara is focused more on "economies of scale," or mass production, stability, some diversity and innovation.

Whereas some of the smaller folks are more focused on the unique and exotic. Those who like to hybridize like to come up with something unusual, however, they also need to provide something sturdy. Those are two very different goals.

Bravo, Karen! I find the general snottiness toward Optimara to be quite discouraging. It's like you can get a merit badge if you never grew what are perfectly fine plants. Well, most of them are perfectly fine plants I have a lot of fun with them..

Julia, it's probably Ontario. There aren't many whites. We just have to dig a little and we learn at the same time. Some people think that one is a very good plant and I'm going to try it again.

Joanne, do you know where you read that about Wrangler's? Sometimes I've thought that some lines certainly seemed to have Optimara genetics but it never seemed prominent in the Wrangler series. For one thing they are all variegated and only a few later ones were variegated in the Optimara line. I haven't studied Optimaras; I'm just old and was around when they first came out (the first Rhapsodies) and I remember them. I never saw any reason not to grow them. When I spoke with Lyon's, they mentioned dropping some of their thumbprints because people complained of them going solid in the summer. Thumbprints often have that tendency. If Harbor Blue does well for you, I don't think you'll be disappointed. I guess Manitoba just isn't flashy enough to get much attention :)

Oh, I think it's safe to say that Holtkamp and Selective Gardener are connected when Monique Holtkamp sends out emails from Selective Gardener :) Just a little family company there.

I ordered leaves and have the babies all over now. I just noticed that the pots are marked O. My Darling. I suppose I should line three of them up with Clementine.

Diana in PA

Lorraine or Larraine Carr from Optmara was trying to pour oil over troubled waters over the entire discussion. The posts can be searched on this forum using her name.

There are two topics, one is that store bought plants are not meant to be identified. That is the point. So if it is an enjoyable past time to identify them, then by all means, have fun with it. Almost every new collector on this forum will go through that thought process.

There would be no Kent storks or robs or ma's or cajun's or grangers or anyone else except the Lyons family if it was not for the Holtkamps and Lyon's.

The other theme on this forum is for the collector who sends away or goes to shows to purchase identified plants.

All Optimaras, maybe I will call them POPS for their instant gratification effect, of course, have names. But in the stores they are technically NOIDs. they are mutts. without that coveted stick that arrives with the plant.

Karin and I joined at about the same time, Karin only collected Optimaras whereas, my mentor had trained me to buy Lyon's own hybrids. So I felt like I was sneaking out for a Hershey Bar when I slipped out to purchase yet one more blooming Optimara.

Anyway, now Karin is a true collector and I have a storage shelf of beautiful optima's to give away when others admire my collection and ask for a plant. Joanne

RE: The Wranglers....

i just checked thespreadsheet, and there are only two mentioned:
I was going to post images, but it didn't work... at some point i have to get over myself again, and read up how to link to images off here ;).

Wrangler's Canyon Echoes = Sunlit Sugar Plum x Optimara Colorado

Wrangler's Dixie Celebration = Persian Tapestry x Optimara Colorado

There must have been SOME back crossing in order to get the variegation to stick. All in all, we don't know what generation the result is, and if, there are other minor influences. putting parentage as A x B = C doesn't exactly work if you have an entire family history to contend with....

lol Joanne, me a "true collector"... Packrat more like! and i believe i still have at least one of most optimaras i started out with two years ago (instead of 8 each).

Karin, I love that link about the gene pool, thanks for reminding us! I am sorry your post disappeared. Sometimes that happens. I don't think the forum managers take them down, i think it just a faulty submit button click that does not connect. I remember when you were snubbed at your first meeting, and am glad you found another club. Sometimes, plant people are just not "people people" I have learned!! Back in the day, I used to find some obscure documents on the 'net noting the technical nature of the crosses in scientific cod I did not understand. So, although intrigued, I thought that was necessary to be a collector. Most of those old archives have vanished, unless someone want to look up the U.S. Patents for the plants. I used to think the AVSA registration number included that info, but now I understand the process is much more casual than that. And, when I first watched my boss get all involved in the technicalities of the plants, I vowed to myself never to go that route .... but that was a long time ago. So now I try to be balanced about it, try to explain with some patience, as people were patient with me when I first joined the forum. So I will eventually re-read my posts and if they sound preachy, will take them down. I am not even sure why I jumped into the discussion, as is is a frequent one on this forum and there is no answer that satisfies all.

For enlightenment, folks who are new might want to look up the discussion between optimara and the forum fro m 2005, i think. I don't recall her name, but she was very nice, but gave up and slunk away after people venting at her for something she had no control over. She was O's PR person.

Terrilou, Thanks for the tips on Wranglers, as I am just getting into them. They are not as consistent performers as the Apaches. I had one that did absolutely nothing for more than one year. It has lovely variegated foliage, so I just let it do its imitation of being a plastic plant.

Finally, it did bloom.

In general, the blue wranglers do better than the pink wranglers, and the less variegation, the better they do. (limited experience)

Diana, Yes, Monique from Selective Gardener is with Holtkamp. I saw a video of her on YouTube giving a tour of the Optimara production facilities. I read an article on Will Smith on the internet that told the story of the Wranglers. If I come across it, I will send you the link.

I remember when Rhapsodies first came out, I was quite young and quite thrilled but not into collecting more than a few at the time. I wish I had stayed in the game back then, but I have had fun catching up. At the time, I lived in a horticultural area, near an agricultural college, so i could grow all sorts of things.

Yes, Manitoba is understated.

I totally agree with everything you all are saying about how ungrateful it is that people bash a big company that keeps the hobby alive, like Optimara. It's just like people who rant at hatcheries who hatch chicks who are rare and hard to find. The high falutin' people rant and rave about how awful it is because these hatcheries aren't breeding for type and show and what not... and if it wasn't for these hatcheries, many of the rare breeds would be extinct or nearly so, and there would be many many people who had never even HEARD of some of those breeds like the Dorking, the Andalusian, Chantecler or the Buckeye! Optimara has been vital in introducing new people to the hobby, and they are the ones that inspire people to start looking further for violets!

All this ranting makes me want to go and place an order directly with Optimara! ;-)

Great posts everyone. I hope you all didn't think I was bashing Optimara.... I think it's amusing that there are so many similar violets, and I can look through a website like Lyndon Lyon and place 20 leaf orders in my cart and go look at what I had, and lo and behold half of what I had put in the cart were nearly the same shade of pink! :-P

Oh, and Diana, they are both red back leaved... and I'm not sure how to tell if the pink bloom was a pansy or otherwise? What's the diff?

in a roundabout way, we are back to the original topic... yes, a lot of the plants look the same - until you take a better look. (and if you go by descriptions, so many of them would be near identical - i have two plants classified as "pink wasp with purple fantasy" but i would never, ever, confuse "imp's spotted infection" with "optimara little hopi II", even if i were just looking at the blossoms.)

it's like not being able to tell two parrots apart. or dogs, or cars (i still classify them by color - mostly).

telling differences from pictures is not easy, unless they are obvious. and sometimes the plants were "improved" in the way they grow, or how long the blooms last, or they form a better rosette - the possibilities are endless, yet you wouldn't notice the difference until you grow them both, and even then, you may not get the same results as your neighbour.

i may pick on optimara, because they have such a huge output and marketing and register a lot of plants, however, at least they don't go calling the "II" version by a different name, as they probably could. They do a lot of work, and we have to face the fact that most of us here grow out of being their target demographic. not their fault, or problem.

Yes, probably not all new varieties "merit" being registered, but you'll find the "duds" disappear faster than the "tried and true" varieties. I've personally seen people hunting down, and shaking trees to find a specimen of a vintage plant. sometimes paying outrageous amounts for them.

me, i'll try anything. once. but why buy pink if i don't like it? i can get a dozen blue ones if i want ;-)

PS. if you talk to companies like apple, or nikon - few of them have their "historic" products in storage still. so a grower of plants keeping the "improved versions" over the ones that needed improving makes sense, from a business perspective. it is the amateur (in the sense of the word of "someone who loves the subject matter") that is tasked with preserving the history, not the person who is making a living (however nice that living may be).

Karin, I love your closing comment, that absolutely sums up what I have been struggling to say "It is the amateur, in the sense of someone who loves the subject matter, that is tasked with preserving the history, not the person who is making a living, however nice that living might be. "

Su, Don't do it! Don't place an order with Optimara! Place an order with one of the smaller vendors such as Fancy Bloomers. You already have a boat load of Optimaras, judging from the photos posted. If you want to place an order, try some of the vendors whose stock you cannot find at retail.

Not only do they value your business, you will spread your wings.

Tastes change, so one year, you want all purples, the next, all pinks, and then whites, and then light blues. Eventually, you find your favorites. Usually, the royal purples win out in my house. Maybe they are the most vigorous growers.

No, we realized you were not bashing anyone. Some of us who have been on the forum for a long time and have a lot of patience also might tend to be a little sensitive on the topic, basing our reactions on comments made years ago on the forum. So we don't want to feel, "uh, oh, here we go again ..."

Most of us have our favorite plants and vendors that others do not like, that mostly went on in the past. Mostly, we are a courteous and generous group.

I think of Diana as our sort of "test kitchen," if you ever have a question about the performance of any violet, Diana's advice helps a lot. (I just wish I was in her vicinity when she tosses out those that don't meet her standards!!)

Monique doesn't work for Holtkamp. Monique is Monique Holtkamp, wife of Reinhold Holtkamp, Jr.

Heavens, I'm no expert. I only know what you couldn't kill in 3 years. I grow some in the window so I have some that may work for that and I like blue. I have seen so many put downs of Optimara that I do stick up for them because they are the ones many new growers start with and they are also good ones to start with. I think it must be depressing to send off an order and have them all die. I usually spend around $75-100 when I order. I can get out of Lowe's for $30 or less. There's no reason to discard them later if you like them and they're doing well because if you think you are going to get better ones, you may be in for a shock. Right now good old Optimara Texas is blooming just fine and Faded Denim looks like the devil. When it gets a flower, it's pretty but I think it's about a foot tall.

I grow Fredettes, some trailers, some wasps now, some little ones, vintage ones - I like violets.

Gardenweb (Houzz?) is not bad about Optimara but you may run into some other people/places where it's like you have cooties. ;) Yes, Kent Stork took the myViolets and hybridized with them and calls them the Ace series, I think. Someone said what perhaps others were thinking and said she'd bought one at Walmart, lol. (He hasn't officially introduced them yet.) I said they looked bigger and that so far the myViolets had seemed to run a bit small and he said that had been his experience. It will be interesting to see them side by side. It was a small photo but the leaves did look large compared to the myViolets. I expect we will be able to see the differences more clearly once they are available. Some plants may not make good show plants but that's okay because I'm not a show grower. It's good to remember that sometimes show growers' objectives may not mesh with a pleasure grower's objectives.

Optimara may not be perfect but I don't think I've ever seen some of the crazy foliage on their plants that I've seen on other hybridizer's. The kind where it looks like it stuck its finger in the light socket or something of the sort. Of course their foliage changes course immediately when I take it home and never looks the same again. I'm used to that.

FC2

Holtkamp 370 entries

P. Hancock 210 entries (and I know some aren't in there)

H. Pittman 728 entries

K. Stork 160 entries

Lyndon Lyon Greenhouses 313 entries

P. Sorano 164 entries

S. Sorano 784 entries (+ 20 under S. Groeneman)

R. Robinson 245 entries

Eyerdom 559 entries

Should we be picking on Holtkamp? There were fewer Buckeyes than I expected. It's always seemed like there were a lot of them.

I had no idea how that was going to turn out but it was interesting.

Diana in PA

LOL turns out optimara is just the most visible target ;-p