Hi Carl,

thank you for your
beautiful Pictures! I like your Sydney x Supreme Garden. The color
obviously descent from Suprime Garden, but the frilly edges it has
from your Sydney. The white star is a nice contrast to the orange.
Are there more of this cross to come?

I suppose you got a Bogota
instead of a Papilio. This happened to me too, a few month ago. But I
liked it that much, that I didn't complained. :-)

Best wishes from Hanover
countryside!

Your Emerald bouquet is amazing!! I remember several years ago when you first posted your Emerald and I had a deeper colored one that you were mentioning that yours was so pale. Well, my deeper colored one is long gone and yours had grown into a gorgeous specimen!!!

All of them are lovely but your display of Emeralds wins the prize!!

Donna☺☺

Hi Peridot,

thanks for your reply! I just sent you a page-long mail, don't feel forced to answer in that lenght! ;)

There are six more smaller bulbs around 2-3cm in diameter. One is growing a fan of leaves, the other ones just stick a tiny tonge out (that is a leafy one, I wish they would grow!). The flowering bulb has a diameter of 5cm, but had some shrinkage due to of it's tiny scape. As you can see, the blooms are still tinier than Supreme Garden, just ~10cm across. The scape has to be a record low for me: 20cm. My Emeralds reached 95cm from neck to bud!

For all you Americans: Just divide roughly by 2,5 ... I'm just too lazy ;)

@Donna:

Thanks! The flowers matured in the cold flat whilst we were on winterholiday. So I guess they are as dark as they get! I did not polinate it because I was just confused by the amount of blooms. The one bulblet did 2 on it's scape, the other scapes had 4 ... I don't know if I'll ever see this craze again :D

I repotted it last year from a 17cm pot to a 19cm one, which I only reserve for my big bulbs. I'm still not so sure about the cybister cycle. Mine were without new leaves until just recent.

Hi Raymond, I think the solution is in the name ... maybe it dislikes growing in pots ;)

I think I'll repot some into a small pot and could give the other ones away ... if anyone in Europe wants to try their chances with these touchy ladies, I'd be happy!

Thanks to Peridot, already dusted with Revelation - for the first time flowering: Sydney x Amputo (as you can see, I was quite eager to cross with Sydney):

Hi Carl,

Very pretty and delicate blooms, congratulations :-)))

Fred

Thank you! I'm myself not overly fond of this one, but then again I had no direction in crossing back then ;) The shape is nice, though the outer tepals don't open fully and the inner ones curl backwards immediately. It has both of Sydney's stipe colours, the inner ones are more burgundry-red. I froze it's pollen and wait until another one of those comes into bloom, which could take a while ...

Oh, and also, can someone give me a hint if I have a Bogota or a Merengue? Here's the picture from this year and two pictures from last year again:

Well, I would say Merengue. Merengue is decidedly orange whereas Bogota is a pinky red.

My Merengue last year..

and here is Bogota..

Hello Carl,

nice to hear, that the
Revelation pollen is in good use. Meanwhile I have nearly half a
dozen crosses with Revelation, so its a good father.

Your first bloom is a
clearly mixture of both parents. Congratulations!

And you may be right in
assuming your red one as Merengue. I'm no expert though...

Thanks a lot for the clarification. I came to the same conclusion, but keept the name Bogota in my head ... anyhow ... next in line to flower is the last plant of "Minerva x white NoID" that I kept. It is pushing 4 stalks from the mother and three of it's four bublets! Also, I'm crossing my fingers that Amputo decides to flower again. It's sprouting leafes after playing rock for half a year.

Amputo isn't the easiest, but it is one of my favorites. I hope that your bulb will flower again soon.

Up to now, it did not sadly ...

But! I've had a gread Hippeastrum-season here without forced domancy. I even got some summer blooms. My avatar picture shows a 'Minerva' x No-ID-white cross I did. It's the only plant I have left but the strongest. This year it bloomed strangely pale. As you can see here:

this year's flower on the left and last year's on the right.

Hi Сarl,

your choice of paternal plant is understandable only if you choose (according to calculation, intuitively or accidentally) to use the dominant white.
So you got a pale colored seedling. The fact that his color varies from year to year, too, is understandable because it is heterozygote.

Hi Oleg, that could well be the solution ... but what triggers this change in pigmentation?

Interesting is that the darker "fishbone"-pattern stayed as vivid but the more orange red on the outer region completely disappeared. These different colours could also be seen in my Sydney-crosses. My goal in breeding is to get rid of the orangy-red and create mostly white blooms with litte but intense red markings. For that I wanted to interbreed Kristie's Gordie ... sadly it did not take :(

Here's Sydney (THE best red-white, apart from it's little flaw with the two red-tones ;) ) this year:

Pigmentation changes is the presence of half-set of genes of anthocyanin inhibitors as well as half-sets of the color genes. If you want a striped seedlings but no orange-red color, try using H. vittatum.

If I didn't know any better, it looks like Sydney might have vitattum in it's genes?

Fred,
perhaps. But we do not know his pedigree ...
But vittatum exactly has all the genes banding, also does not have the genes inhibitors. But some clones (e.g., mine) do not have genes an orange-red.

Before the hippie season starts again, I had some great plants which were late to the party:

Spotlight (now blooming again after the purchase last year. This time without deformed blooms)

Apple Blossom ... with very intense colour.

... aaaand H. aulicum. Blooming for the first time. Sadly one of the two blooms broke off and it seems that the remaining did not take the 'Sydney x Amputo' pollen ...

All very beautiful, thanks for sharing. I'm so sorry for your broken aulicum and the failed pollination attempt :-((( Perhaps next season the the pollination/flowering faeries will be kinder :-))

Thank you Fred. I was amazed to see that my aulicum flower as quick as it did! I think I had a great year of Hippeastrum even though I mostly neglected them. I'm looking forward to what the next year brings ... usually my plants do flower indoors quite a bit later than they do for you guys. I'll continue to show off what flowers here.

My Hippeastrum season initated with Emerald again, but this year I missed it's short blooming period completely, though it only had one stalk. It must have overdid itself last year ;)

Next is Merengue with 3 stalks, the first had six flowers, the next (which I try to pollinate with H. aulicum) has 5 and the third hasn't open as of now.

Hi Carl, I just reread your thread and admired your striking Emerald again. Hopefully you can enjoy its flowers again nest year! And this Merengue is just gorgeous! Sometimes mislabels are not that bad... I got Rosario 2 years ago when I ordered Chico and it's blooming right now with two stalks at the same time...

By the way, what is your Amputo doing? I got one this year and it's blooming right now but I'm a little worried because I read that Amputo is quite difficult to cultivate.

Greetings from Berlin!

Anja

Hi Anja,

yes, I am quite pleased with this mislable! The Tango/La Paz I got the first time is now living and blooming happyly at my siter-in-law's. Rosario is brilliant, I was very close to ordering this one too. But I didn't want to crowd myself with cybisters ... though there are a couple of breeds I think I have to get one time or another.

Amputo is playing living rock again ;). My three bulbs (+ bulblets) did have a nice bunch of leaves, but since two or three month nothing ... I think last time they "rested" for nearly half a year

Hi Anja,

Your Chico is stunning :-))) I have brought mine up from the basement about a month ago and she sent up two very nice scapes. I got her in 2015 and she's never disappointed me. This year I may try to cross her with something like Naranja or Fire Dancer to intensify the color and tone down the shape a bit. Let's see if she's in "the mood" :-)))

Fred

Fred, I think Anja's pictures are Rosario hee hee.....;-))

My Chicos always die and I have to replace them almost yearly!! I don't even think I have one this year so it's on next year's list.....

Oooops :-))) I'll try it just the same with Chico and see what happens, but I do have Rosario too.

I don't have Chico but Rosario sets seeds quite easy if you want to give it a try :-)