Gladiolus huttonii hybrids?
Mary Sue Ittner (Wed, 04 May 2005 07:52:55 PDT)

Dear All,

A number of years ago I received some plants from Jim Robinett he had
labeled Gladiolus huttonii. I shared some with the Mendocino Coast
Botanical Gardens and subsequently grew some more from seed Bob Werra gave
me. I thought they were delightful plants which is why I grew more of them,
but they just didn't match the description in my books of that species and
I wondered if there was that much variation of the plants in the wild. This
year several pots of mine were in bloom in February and March for a long
time and I was quite enchanted with all the variations in the flowers and
interested that the ones that were almost all yellow bloomed first. I am
wondering if these are not really Gladiolus huttonii, but hybrids instead.
I wrote Alan Horstmann who was going to check with John Manning for me.
Alan thought they were probably hybrids with Gladiolus tristis in the
parentage and had a distant memory that someone else in South Africa had
grown plants like this from Kirstenbosch seed. My friend Jana has some that
look like these pictures and hers were grown from Kirstenbosch seed. Alan
has not heard back from John and is now away I believe. I'd appreciate an
opinion from other South African members on this forum about this. Is there
this kind of variation in the wild? I'm afraid I got a little carried away
when I added them to the wiki as I couldn't decide which of the different
forms to include. Sorry about that. That happened with me and my Moraea
(Homeria) hybrids too.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

The picture below Bob took of Alan's Gladiolus huttonii when we visited in
South Africa a couple of years ago. Alan suspected that is the only picture
we have on the wiki that is not a hybrid.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/…

As my garden continues to be full of blooms of South African bulbs and I
have a lot of pollinators visiting my flowers I realize that probably a
great deal of the seed I have given to the BX and exchanges could represent
hybrids. With as much as I grow I just don't have time to hand pollinate.
For many gardeners it probably doesn't matter as they are just interested
in having pretty flowers. For those wanting pure species it could be a problem.

Mary Sue