Lycoris speculations

Anita I suspect has only a few bulbs of L. squamigera and no
other species. The chances of her getting seed are so extremely low,
I'd still give it a ZERO.

I grow hundreds of blooming stems and have had a very few
seeds either with hand pollination using a variety of other species
or manipulating cut stems. I suspect Sam Caldwell grew as many or
more bulbs and species or was thrilled to get 3 seeds.

No one -including Sam Caldwell - has produced a viable seedling.

Prospects of producing viable L. squamigera seed.

Never say never. Bear with me.

L. squamigera is a very odd Lycoris hybrid. Let me review two
genetic topics; Chromosome number and kayotype.

Chromosome numbers:
L. squamigera has 2/3 N = 27
L. sprengeri is 2N = 22
L. longituba is 2N =16

The only mathematical way to get 3N of 27 is by adding 8 + 8
+ 11 or a full diploid set of longituba chromosomes and a haploid set
from L. sprengeri. Even with this total almost 1/2 the genetic
material 11/27 (40%) is from sprengeri and 22/27 (60%) is from L.
longituba.

Morphologically L. squamigera seems to be intermediate
between the two species. Close enough that I'd belive this is the
parentage.

Karyoptype
Gross chromosome morphology describes that each chromosome
has 2 'arms' with a centromere (a denser distinct area) in the
middle. Chromomes can be described as:

metacentric- when the two arms are essentially similar in
length and the centromere is the middle of the chromosome.
acrocentric - when one arm is distinctly shorter than the
other and the centromere marks the boundary

or telocentric = when the centromere is essentially at the
very end of the chromosome.

Chromosome morphology is based on the position of the
centromere and these forms are abbreviated as M, A and T respectively.

Both L. longituba and L. chinensis have a karyotype of 6M + 10T = 16

L. sprengeri 's karyoptype is 22A

L. squamigera is 6M + 10T + 11 A = 27

It sure looks like L. squamigera is a combination of all of
longituba and 1/2 of sprengeri as the chromosome count alone
suggests. Further evidence of this parentage.

BUT L. chinensis has the same count and type as L. longituba.
Culd it be a parent? I suppose it is 'as likely' as L. longituba, but
L. squamigera shows none of L.chinensis' characteristics such as
spidery form, ruffled petal edges or yellow/gold color. See below,
too.

At the risk of boring all but 2 or 3 readers, what this count
and type support is the oddness of this parentage. There is no way
for these odd bedfellows of numbers and forms to successfully line up
to produce a viable gamete for fertilization to take place. Even a
diploid of 1 set each would likely be sterile. This must be a rare
cross to even be successful enough to produce the original L.
squamigera. This hybrid is rather astoundingly and amazingly quite
successful as it has become the most vigorous and wide spread of all
Lycoris.

Future squamigera crosses.

The most likely candidate to fill out a viable tetraploid
would be the addition of a single additional set of chromosomes from
L. sprengeri to produce a 4 N = 38 ( 6M + 10T+ 22A), but this is
highly speculative and I think unlikely.

Note -all this info on plant genetics is fairly basic and readily
available on the web - try searching "basic plant genetics", "plant
chromosomes", etc. Anita check out a wikipedia articles on these
subjects, too.

History:

L. caldwelli has the same N and karyotype as L. squamigera
and may be the partner to L. squamigera using L. chinensis as one
parent. It is closer to being intermediate between chinensis and
sprengeri here, but very different from L squamigera and much later
blooming.

Experimental hybrids have produce longituba x sprengeri
crosses that look similar to L squamigera as well as L. chinensis x
sprengeri crosses although there appearance is less well described.

SO.... Lycoris has many opportunities for hybridization and the
production of beautiful garden worthy subjects, but L. squamigera is
not likely to be a very productive starting point.

Hope this helps more than it confuses.

We are in the midst of today's rain (already over 3 inches in
3 days ) and might be another inch on the way, so I have time to sit
behind the key board and catch up some.

Thanks for holding out this far. best
Jim W.

--
Dr. James W. Waddick
8871 NW Brostrom Rd.
Kansas City Missouri 64152-2711
USA
Ph. 816-746-1949
Zone 5 Record low -23F
Summer 100F +