On12/24/2017 9:54 AM, Irving Gunderson wrote: > Why am I fussing about this? Because the photos I see show some > forms to be far superior and I was hoping it would not be difficult to > get some of these. > > Many years ago the Robinetts who went around collecting seed in California and selling it along with bulbs they grow from seed used to sell Mariposa hybrids. They assumed that open pollinated seed if several species were flowering at the same time could be hybrid seed. So plants grown from that seed were sold accordingly. I expect that seed from PBS donors that are not isolating the different species is really hybrid seed and you'd get a variation of plants from that seed. For example Calochortus luteus and Calochortus superbus often grow and flower in the same locations. I've witnessed some really interesting differences when I've been in some of those places when plants are in flower at the same time and wonder what species they are or are they just hybrids. One of these days I'll get around to adding to the wiki some examples I saw a couple of years ago. In the meantime you can get a small sense of this (but not with the same variation) in the wiki photos on Bear Valley Road. http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… The plants we witness in the wild even of the same species often show a variation. And the wiki pages for Calochortus superbus and venustus show a range of possibilities. http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… The Calochortus venustus I grew from seed produced flowers with a lot of variation. Like John Wickham's different C. venustus 'Burgundy' flowers, the ones I ordered from a catalog did not look like the photo in the catalog at all. None of the ones that flowered were red and they were soon gone. It's likely that if you grow plants from PBS seed you will have some to great variation in the plants that flower and the plants that survive will be used to your location. Will the flowers that result be superior? That probably would depend on your definition of the same. I think one of the pleasures from growing from seed happens when you see the first flowers. Sometimes the result is a great disappointment, but sometimes you are rewarded with something very special. Mary Sue _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…