S. leucophylla RED (WRR x Dark Covington Co, AL)
Oct 15, 2019 14:43:43 GMT -5
stevebooth, rudeko, and 8 more like this
Post by meizzwang on Oct 15, 2019 14:43:43 GMT -5
In other plant industries, when you cross two nice, proven clones together, Elitist Breeders disrespectfully call that "Pollen Chucking" and not "real breeding." BTW, it's a grey area how one can define "real breeding," that's open to debate. Anyways, I think some breeders become disillusioned with others because it's one thing to make a cross (which some breeders perceive anyone can do), but it's another thing to go through all the decades of "breeding work" to create an amazing cultivar in the end. Most breeding work requires several generations of selective pressure, which usually ends up with few successes and many failures.
They consider breeding not just the act of creating the cross and growing out the resulting seeds, but going through all the hard work of evaluating seedlings, predicting new outcomes based on the genetic history of those plants, and further refining the line to stabilize the desired traits in seed form.
However, in my opinion, pollen chucking is just as powerful of a technique as "real breeding." Who says there's only one way to breed?! And SO WHAT if you end up with something amazing the first shot? Yes, it's not as likely, but that's still breeding in my book, and with Sarracenia, it takes a hell of a lot of work and quite a bit of luck to even pollen chuck! So much can go wrong from the day that flower opens to the day you realize you found a winner. One generation of breeding Sarracenia typically takes at least 4 years to complete, and that's with crack rock/ROIDing out your seedlings to grow at super sonic speeds of the 70's! well, maybe not of the 70's, that just sounded catchy.....
"Elitist breeders" consider breeding not just the act of creating the cross, but going through all the hard work of stabilizing the trait in the plants so that they breed true for the novel characteristics that were sought after in the first place. That works for some plants, but with Sarracenia, I think if humans lived perhaps 100 years longer, that might be a reasonable goal, but given how long it takes to breed these plants, pollen chucking is just fine in my opinion However, I have gone through the elitist breeding technique, and it took 15 years to create the improved black veined flava, so if you're one of those type of breeders, I do have great respect for what you do.
Now that I just talked or rather typed your ear off, let's talk about this dang RED leucophylla cross, shall we?! Here's the actual name: S. leucophylla RED (Wilkerson's Red Rocket N. Walton Co, FL x leucophylla DARK RED Covington Co, AL). So many of you are probably wondering, what do you get when you cross two stand out, proven, amazing RED leucophylla clones together? Long story short, you end up sifting through an enormous pile of garbage, but once you get through all the trash, a few GEMS are up in there! The majority of this cross resulted in mediocre, average looking leucophylla plants. There was one that was much whiter than the rest, but compared to an alba, it's not worth mentioning. There were also many mediocre red plants: clones that had some red on them, but nothing better or equal to the parents, so these were discarded.
This is the best red leucophylla cross I've ever made (so far at least, I have some other crosses in the pipeline that look pretty amazing), but it did take a lot of effort to find the winners. I sowed probably a little less than under 1000 seeds to begin with, and maybe ended up with 20 stunning red individuals. I also found a very interesting golden leucophylla clone with the added bonus of having a red body as well! This was one of the gems, I mean look at it (see pics below)!!! Definitely the result of the historic moorei influence from either one or both parents (for more info on that, you can read here: sarracenia.proboards.com/thread/4294/hypothesis-color-forms-hybrid-origin )
I think for now I'm calling this clone S. leucophylla 'Red and Yellow':
Jay F'in C of Latter-Day Saints! (no offense to those of you who are Pentecostal):
Here's the select individual from the batch, it's the most vigorous plant, almost 3X the size of every other plant from the exact same cross. It's probably not too much more spectacular colorwise though, the other select plants are also pretty dang nice:
Here's a bad example of some of the other individuals. It's a bad example because these pics were taken many months ago, they're much bigger and look more colorful/mature now:
They consider breeding not just the act of creating the cross and growing out the resulting seeds, but going through all the hard work of evaluating seedlings, predicting new outcomes based on the genetic history of those plants, and further refining the line to stabilize the desired traits in seed form.
However, in my opinion, pollen chucking is just as powerful of a technique as "real breeding." Who says there's only one way to breed?! And SO WHAT if you end up with something amazing the first shot? Yes, it's not as likely, but that's still breeding in my book, and with Sarracenia, it takes a hell of a lot of work and quite a bit of luck to even pollen chuck! So much can go wrong from the day that flower opens to the day you realize you found a winner. One generation of breeding Sarracenia typically takes at least 4 years to complete, and that's with crack rock/ROIDing out your seedlings to grow at super sonic speeds of the 70's! well, maybe not of the 70's, that just sounded catchy.....
"Elitist breeders" consider breeding not just the act of creating the cross, but going through all the hard work of stabilizing the trait in the plants so that they breed true for the novel characteristics that were sought after in the first place. That works for some plants, but with Sarracenia, I think if humans lived perhaps 100 years longer, that might be a reasonable goal, but given how long it takes to breed these plants, pollen chucking is just fine in my opinion However, I have gone through the elitist breeding technique, and it took 15 years to create the improved black veined flava, so if you're one of those type of breeders, I do have great respect for what you do.
Now that I just talked or rather typed your ear off, let's talk about this dang RED leucophylla cross, shall we?! Here's the actual name: S. leucophylla RED (Wilkerson's Red Rocket N. Walton Co, FL x leucophylla DARK RED Covington Co, AL). So many of you are probably wondering, what do you get when you cross two stand out, proven, amazing RED leucophylla clones together? Long story short, you end up sifting through an enormous pile of garbage, but once you get through all the trash, a few GEMS are up in there! The majority of this cross resulted in mediocre, average looking leucophylla plants. There was one that was much whiter than the rest, but compared to an alba, it's not worth mentioning. There were also many mediocre red plants: clones that had some red on them, but nothing better or equal to the parents, so these were discarded.
This is the best red leucophylla cross I've ever made (so far at least, I have some other crosses in the pipeline that look pretty amazing), but it did take a lot of effort to find the winners. I sowed probably a little less than under 1000 seeds to begin with, and maybe ended up with 20 stunning red individuals. I also found a very interesting golden leucophylla clone with the added bonus of having a red body as well! This was one of the gems, I mean look at it (see pics below)!!! Definitely the result of the historic moorei influence from either one or both parents (for more info on that, you can read here: sarracenia.proboards.com/thread/4294/hypothesis-color-forms-hybrid-origin )
I think for now I'm calling this clone S. leucophylla 'Red and Yellow':
Jay F'in C of Latter-Day Saints! (no offense to those of you who are Pentecostal):
Here's the select individual from the batch, it's the most vigorous plant, almost 3X the size of every other plant from the exact same cross. It's probably not too much more spectacular colorwise though, the other select plants are also pretty dang nice:
Here's a bad example of some of the other individuals. It's a bad example because these pics were taken many months ago, they're much bigger and look more colorful/mature now: