Daffodils in the Southern Hemisphere - 2007

[Maggi Young]

Thanks, Lesley! Can you lend me a few quid?

[Lesley Cox]

Oh sure, why not. Can you think of anyone I can ask?

[Paul T]

Graham,

Wow!!  The gold rimmed are glorious, that NTT hybrid is stunning, and there are more I could mention specifically but won't.  Fantastic pics.  Those apodanthe hybrids are quite striking as well, so I'll look for them at the show this weekend as I think you mentioned there'd be some of them there.  SOOOOOOOO many nice flowers you're showing us.

[Mini-daffs]

 
Hi
There should be some good flowers at the Show.
Sounds like a few people are developing expensive tastes in miniature daffodils. Remember it will be quite a while before some of the flowers you have seen will be commercially available so plenty of time to save up!!
An interesting aside. The NTT early exhibition form can come with up to 6 flowers to a stem. The petals are not too long as to be twisted. Overall it is a superb flower that we have selected out. However, in terms of commercial value it is worth a fraction of the little reverse bicolor. The market will pay for the latest and greatest hybrid but not for a winning selected form of a species. Same thing applies to N. cyclamineus.
A few more photos.

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Thanks for the useful information regarding 'turning around' Lesley !
Very helpful ! 

[annew]

More advice on 'turning around' - as Lesley says, the bulbs arrive in early spring, and I pot them up in a clay pot straight away (I always plant in a layer of sand within the compost) and they are plunged in a shaded greenhouse, and kept just moist. After a few weeks they come into growth and you can stop going out there every day to look at whether the mortgage you took out was worth it. If you are lucky they may come into flower, so take this opportunity to hand pollinate and get some seed, just in case they take umbrage and die on you.
Keep the plunge moist at all times and give a little extra water in hot weather, and they will probably remain in leaf until new foliage is produced at what would be the normal time up here. After that, hopefully, they will behave as northern natives! Start saving now, and forget any notion of buying 2 or 3 of something, unless you have been lucky in the lottery.

[Maggi Young]

Great advice, Lesley and Anne, thanks. I would certainly be hand polinating any flowers as a back up, anyway, but I'm a bit doubtful about pollination regarding any of Graham's little gems since there has been talk of sterility being a virtue !?? Maybe I need to contact Graham, expressing my interest in sex!

[Mini-daffs]

 
And I thought this was a wholesome site! All this talk about sex just because we have thousands of [daffodil] children! Anyway Helen says all the good ones are her crosses!!
Maggie, daffodil fertility is very complex and even more so with miniatures. It is all about diploids, triploids and tetraploids, unreduced gametes, a lot of luck (bit like winning the lottery) and money (sex has price as they say in the movies but our prices are very much determined by rarity and demand for exhibition)! We do a nice line in triandus hybrids but nearly all of them are mules because they are inter-sectional crosses between flowers with different gene numbers. I have been caught--our fine W-YYP (watermelon pink) never set seed for us until last year but one of customers has had a field day in terms of seed harvested by doing back crosses. I did an article a long time ago in the Tasmanian Daffodil Journal that talked about our breeding program. A more modern article that I had written for the RHS was never published-they are more into standards although with Brian Duncan now growing miniatures there has been a slight change but their shows don't rate in terms of miniature quality vis-a-vis the big miniature shows in Australia or the US. This years article in the NZ Daffodil Journal is a must for the really keen miniature daffodil enthusiast.

[mark smyth]

Brian Duncan is away tomorrow to NZ so some of you may bump in to him. I assume he is off to a daff show

[Mini-daffs]

 
The Australasian Daffodil Championships are in New Zealand this weekend. Some of our American friends like Bob Spotts and Kirby Fong will be there as well. One of our local standard growers will be judging there. We don't travel much during hybridising time so we will be at the canberra Show.
Maggie, forgot to say that we are most likely to make a few gems available when we need a new computer or some new big boys toys to make farming easier as I age or to build new galactic headquarters!

[Lesley Cox]

I had an email a couple or so weeks ago from Brian Duncan suggesting he and I might meet somewhere at a daff show. I'm not sure of dates and venues and I still have car problems (haven't got one yet, driving an old bomb of Roger's and it needs large input of prayer to be sure of arrival at destination.) But if there's an opportunity, I'll take it.

[Mini-daffs]

 
Lesley
David Adams or Peter Ramsay would be able to give you details of where Brian will be visiting in NZ.
Kind regards
Graham

[Paul T]

Graham,

Obviously I have a little in the way of strange tastes then..... in a lot of ways I really like the selected forms ot the species.  That said, I like so many of your hybrids as well (that reverse bicolour is stunning!!)

[annew]

Is it possible for us to get hold of copies of the article you mentioned, Graham?

[Lesley Cox]

Thanks Graham. I know Dave quite well so I'll phone him tonight.