Dear Jim, thanks again for that excellent and mouth-watering article. According to your description, there are several Lycoris for continental zone 5-7 climate and semi shade fall flowering - that (rare) combination should make them an essential garden species in most of middle Europe - yet they are virtually unheard of and hard to obtain - Lauw de Jager offers 3 Species (L. aurea, radiata and squamigera) in small quantities, but that's about it with European sources, and on Ebay there's either american sources or those from the home country of very untalented photoshop artists - so what is it that keeps Lycoris from the European breakthrough they seem to deserve? Martin Southern Germany Am 22.02.2017 um 15:08 schrieb James Waddick: > Dear David, > > I knew you could come through. Thanks. > > The article I had in mind is the first on your list http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/… > > I was sort of surprised that the word ‘karyotype’ does not appear in the text at all. But the ‘meat’ that applies to the question of hybridizing is toward the end that discusses chromosome numbers, fertility and related. > > My comments below apply only, to the hardy / spring foliage species in the genus. I cannot grow most of the fall foliage species or say much of experiences in hybridizing these species, although numerous hybrids are available. > > Using known hybrids and especially those with odd number of chromosomes and really ‘odd’ combinations of numbers makes them unlikely to very unlikely cadidates for hybridization. On the other hand combiing known fertile diploids will have a better chance of success. > > I suspect that since L. squamigera is so well known and widest grown and it is so steadfast infertile, many gardeners may think that producing hybrids is difficult. Well it is if you use L. squamigera. Both L. chinensis and L. longituba are so inter-fertile they produce a ridiculous amount of ccombinations of full fertile seedlings. In practice it is more difficult to keep these good ’typical’ looking separate and not produce hybrid seeds. Hybrid seedlings show the full spectrum of species differences and are very vigorous. All shade from ‘orange’ to white and shapes from regular - lily-like - to spidery appear in any combination. > > My suggestions for those attempting to hybridize Lycoris might go for the large species - larger flowers and longer stems - and try to improve the color range toward apricot, peach, tangerine since these seem surprisingly few. There are also possibilities to work toward better larger flowered blue tones and perhaps purple/ lavender. Your imagination is the only limit. > > Hope this fills in some blanks. I should mentiln that the only aspect of karyotype study here is the base numnber of chromosomes. There are other aspects that may be as or more impoirtant in hybridizing. I do suggest interested readers pursue Krita et all publication mentioned in the above article. > > Best and good luck. Jim W. > > > > > > On Feb 22, 2017, at 6:36 AM, David Pilling <david@davidpilling.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > On 22/02/2017 05:17, James Waddick wrote: >> I could not find the article or articles I wrote for PBS >> One of these articles discusses Lycoris karyotypes > Jim's article on growing Lycoris is here: > > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/… > > Short form: https://goo.gl/gvWKrh/ > > It does not mention karyotypes. However there are several posts by Jim to the list which do, for the lot see: > > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/… > > You can work your way through them from the links on the left hand side. A likely candidate is: > > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/2009-August/… > > or maybe: > > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/… > > > >> Maybe David can find and post links. > All that Google-fu - different to real life finding stuff. > > -- Martin ---------------------------------------------- Southern Germany Likely zone 7a _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/