Saturday, March 03, 2007

Japanese Chimeras

We've got something special for the post today! Dale Martens has sent a wonderful article about the newest thing in African violets, the chimeras from Japan! Dale says:

"I've attached 4 photos of the Japanese African violet Chimera 'Yukako'. See the pretty purple and green chimera flowers in the first photo. I decided to hybridize with the plant, so I made some crosses although green flowers are notoriously difficult to breed! A few weeks later I decided I wanted to propagate it, so I removed the center.
Yukako in bloom.

Within a month I got new growth which you can see in the next photo. Well, I went on a 3 week trip to Australia and New Zealand and upon returning we found ourselves being very attentive for the next two months to a relative who was quite sick. So I didn't have a chance to remove the growing center of 'Yukako'.
New suckers emerge where the center was removed.


See the next photo with an abundant amount of sucker growth! Finally I got around to removing all the suckers.


Time to remove the suckers!




The final photo shows how many I got. Some suckers were already blooming true!

An abundance of suckers!

About the seed pods: so far 2 had seeds and 7 did not have a single seed even though the fat pods took 5-1/2 months to ripen. Seeds sown 2 weeks ago haven't sprouted yet. I'm not surprised because this same sort of thing happened when I crossed the green/white chimera 'Emerald City' with 'Louisiana Lagniappe'. Happily with that cross I was able to get a few seeds that gave me my two newly introduced 'Heartland' African violets." - Dale Martens in Illinois.

A special thanks to Dale for taking the time to send this entry. With luck, we may also be able to share one of the earliest photos of a new hybrid streptocarpus that is going to be in bloom for the first time in a few days! (I can't wait!!)
Photos are used with permission and may not be reproduced in any way.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What were you hoping to get for characteristics when you did your crosses? Will the seed pods be planted and the results shared on the blog in the future?