1999 Our Adventure - Part 2

'Adventure' The Hybrid Click images to enlarge

The highlight of our 1999 adventure with Victoria certainly proved to be Victoria 'Adventure'. The reciprocal of the 'Longwood Hybrid' cross has long been considered "impossible" or "not viable". Our experience was quite the contrary!

'Longwood Hybrid' is cruziana x amazonica. 'Adventure' is amazonica x cruziana. Independently of one another, we, Nancy and Trey Styler of the Victoria Conservancy in Colorado and Joe Summers at Missouri Botanical Garden all produced seeds from the cross successfully. When comparing notes about 1998 seed production, we were all thrilled with the triple success and joined together in naming the new hybrid 'Adventure'.

We of course all agonized over the seeds when we started them. They did indeed sprout and grow. Here we grew 'Adventure' and 'Longwood Hybrid' made with the same parents side by side in two locations for direct comparison. One pair grew in the added-back bottom of Reflection. The other pair grew in 10 inch pots in a rather shady pond in the interior garden, staying small but exhibiting the same differences as the bigger ones.

V. 'Adventure' and V. 'Longwood Hybrid'

Though sprouted a month later, the big 'Adventure' began blooming only 10 days behind 'Longwood Hybrid'. It produced 46" pads as opposed to 42" for Longwood (our pads never reach the size attained elsewhere -- a good thing for the space we have available!) 'Adventure' had 58 flowers over the season which extended into mid-November, having two flowers at once six times. 'Longwood Hybrid' had 47 flowers over a week longer blooming span.

'Adventure' has somewhat lower rims relative to pad size and 'Adventure' pads have a more olive cast to the green upper surface and a deeper maroon rim. Where 'Longwood Hybrid' buds are rather squat and rounded, 'Adventure' buds are more slender and pointed, darker and have more thorns.

V. 'Adventure' bud	V. 'Longwood Hybrid' bud	'Adventure' top, 'Longwood Hybrid' bottom

'Adventure's' flower is larger than 'Longwood Hybrid's' by about an inch because of narrow tapering petals as compared to wide rounded petals. In the flowers dissected, 'Adventure' had more, though thinner petals, approximately 62 to 54 for 'Longwood Hybrid'. The second night flowers of 'Adventure' take their color from the particular amazonica parent, pale to dark pink, where 'Longwood Hybrid' is medium pink.

V. 'Adventure'	V. 'Longwood Hybrid'

In 1998, we also made back-crosses of the species to 'Longwood Hybrid': 'Discovery' (L x a), looked just as expected, 3/4 amazonica; and 'Challenger' (L x c), also made by Joe Summers, which looked like 3/4 cruziana, though it developed interesting irregular wavy rims later in the season. This year we made similar back-crosses with 'Adventure', 'Atlantis' (A x a) and 'Columbia' (A x c). They are named for the Space Shuttles that begin their voyages from our "side yard".