Hi Mike, Your hybrids are quite nice and remind me of some I saw years ago in South Africa where they were working on crossing winter growing species. Its hard to improve on mother Nature but some of the hybrids are truly beautiful. I've been playing with the summer growing glads though I have a few crosses I made years ago with winter glads and am now growing out the seeds, they are in their second year (from refrigerated seeds) so I will see flowers this year or next on those crosses. What I keep forgetting to do but need to do is to save the pollen and freeze it of the winter growers to see if they can be crossed onto summer growing glads, like the dalenii hybrids I have been working with. There is a greater diversity of form and shape among the winter growers, though some of the lesser known summer growers are also quite unusual but those are also mostly young and need time to mature before I get flowers. If anyone has crossed winter and summer growers I am curious what gr owth pattern dominates. I do have a red flowered plant from a nursery out west that I think they called cardinalis, it is not, but very well might have cardinalis in its background. Narrow leaves and summer growing for me, and also winter hardy. Alas it seems to be sterile so far. Nice red and white flowers, not like the ruffled big glads at all. Ernie In NY where I am still working on getting the last discount bulb order in the ground, and another one comes later this week. Oh my aching back..... -----Original Message----- From: Michael Mace <michaelcmace@gmail.com> To: pbs <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Sat, Nov 28, 2015 9:54 pm Subject: [pbs] New winter-growing Gladiolus hybrids, and a Calochortus I've been experimenting casually with hybridizing some of the winter-growing Gladiolus species from South Africa. Some of the crosses have come out very nicely. To me they look a bit like Alstroemerias, with rich colors and a lot of contrasting streaks and stripes. But they're easier for me to grow. (In my climate, Alstroemerias tend to die out unless they get some summer water, whereas the winter-growing Glads are happy with total summer dryness.) I finally found the time to post photos of the results from spring 2015. You can see the best ones here: http://bit.ly/1NBRPWe/ I also posted photos of a couple of Calochortus hybrids: http://bit.ly/1YAE5Ni/ Mike San Jose, CA