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Year of the (White) Tortoise by Kit & Ben Knotts - Click images to enlarge |
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It was a pleasantly uneventful year in our Adventure with Victoria. No hurricanes, not even a tropical storm. A few wind/rain events bent an occasional pad, especially on amazonicas, but didn’t affect blooming or seeding. We were able to get a jump-start on the season by installing four plants in Reflection in early April. Of the 11 plants eventually installed, eight were holdovers, stalled for more than a year in small pots in Sun. See 2008 Still Stalled for details. All grew to normal size with normal flower and seed production. Except – Two siblings, crosses of two wild cruzianas made in 2006, were weird. Both plants, even with many buds cut off early in their bloom cycle, often had only three sepals, were usually stuck shut, and had nectar, a sure sign they wouldn’t set seed. A few flowers on the larger plant were normal and set seed, but we haven’t distributed them and won’t use them in our own breeding program. We don’t think these aberrations had anything to do with stalling as other stalled cruzianas grew out normally. |
| Another pair of siblings was very interesting and the reason for calling 2009 the Year of the White Tortoise. (Slow-growing amazonica is always trying to catch up with hare cruziana.) | ||
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Skipping several generations, offspring of the first “White the Second Night” amazonica were also white! See Our Adventure 2006 The White One. Second night flowers are extremely dramatic and beautiful but – if our goal is to perpetuate typical amazonicas – is growing them a good thing? This is explored in the cover story of WGI Online 4.4. We will not grow them on purpose, for the sake of the worldwide seed bank and some fear of corrupting the gene pool with atypical examples. RBG Kew’s Carlos Magdalena will isolate the whites and try to develop a consistently white line. He has seedlings of the white selfed and white x white growing as we write this. |
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| Speaking of Carlos, a highlight of late summer was his first trip to the US. We were included in his Florida swing and took the opportunity to invite “core” Victoria growers to join us. This included Dave and Davia Brigante from Oregon, Craig and Darcy Presnell, Florida, and Rich Sacher, Louisiana. Carlos very much enjoyed surfing on a Victoria pad. Carlos Visits | |
 Davia, Craig, Carlos, Dave, Darcy, Rich |
 Carlos surfing on an Adventure pad |
| We looked out at Reflection one day in late spring and saw the strangest thing swimming in it! It looked like a big snake but the even bigger submerged body told us it was an Anhinga. How did it find its way here? It left as soon as its wings were dry enough. | ||
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< Stalled plants can bloom and still be planted out, attaining normal size. 'Longwood Hybrid' |
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