Those are great pictures, considering they were taken with a phone! You look happy, and relieved of a bit of cabin fever, anyway! Nice score... Pink Floyd is a beauty! And don't let the shrinking bulb thread freak you out... it had nothing to do with offsets in the same pot, at all. They were just genetically inferior specimens, is my guess. None had babies. In fact, my oldest and dearest bulb, a Minerva, grew in the same pot with her daughter until they got so huge they cracked the pot! That's the only reason I separated them. I probably should have shaved a little bit off the mother's basal plate, but she grows so well and blooms so faithfully, I didn't even think about it. If I notice any decline, I'll do it, though. Great pictures... thanks for sharing!

That is simply a glorious photo, Alana! Hans-Werner, it is wonderful to see you here. I hope that you are still tuned in because I have two questions that I sincerely hope you will be kind enough to answer. 1. Did the beautiful offspring produced from your ÂPink Floyd x ÂGiraffe crosses display increased vigor and resilience? 2. I recently asked a grower in Holland for advice regarding a Pink Floyd bulb that had a crumbling and disintegrating basal plate. He advised, "Dig up the bulbs every 3-4 years and cut away the complete basal plate, including the roots. Once planted again the bulb will start to make new and fresh roots again." What do you think of his advice? Many thanks, Blanca

Thanks, y'all : ) I am overall pretty darn happy with this cross. It has taken the low light & cool conditions in good stride. I'm sure no selfed pods set on this one, there -might- be some seeds on the second scape from pink starfish, and no seeds from the little orangy red thingy. I will test the pollen back against Pink Floyd, gotta concentrate those scent genes! Hiya Maria, I tried selfing Striped Panther, didn't work this time : ( It may have set a pod on the fragrant white noid, that could be a very strong fragrance combination. ( I promised myself I wouldn't set seed this year ! ) Drop me a line if you need any pollen. Lora

As a veteran dog breeder, I'm no stranger to culling... it's an important part of a breeding program and must be done to keep the genetic pool clean and strong. Though it sounds like a cruel practice, it has to be understood that it's the responsible thing to do when we change the natural reproductive selection process. In essence, we're playing God... and it's only right that we do it properly. Nature culls... we must, also. Culling plants will be a lot easier, and even compost plays an important role in the gardening process... at present, I'm only sprouting a dozen or so seeds at a time, and I'm doing this because space is at a premium! I need to re-think and re-vamp my indoor gardening areas. This first year of collecting parent bulbs and watching them bloom, and then pollinating and harvesting seed, has been mainly a learning experience for me... I'm still very much a novice when it comes to Hippeastrums! I had originally intended to keep very detailed records and begin a breed file, but I must admit that I got lost in all the wonder and beauty of my bulbs, and was very lax in my record-keeping! Next bloom season will be the beginning of much better discipline in the record-keeping department, and I'll actually start crossing with a goal in mind! I haven't thought particularly hard about what end result I'd like to pursue, but I have all summer to lay out a plan for next year. Being such a novice of flower breeding, I still have a lot to learn... before I began participating in this forum on a regular basis, I didn't even know it was so easy to breed flowers! I just found out recently what actually happens when a speck of pollen lands in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time! I didn't know that it grows an extension, cell by cell, until it reaches the ovary and penetrates the embryo sac of an ovule! And I didn't know that once the two cells, that of the pollen and the ovule, come together and form one cell that then divides to form what will be seeds, it's called a zygote! It's all so amazing! So, in short, culling won't be a problem... once I figure out what the direction I take will be. I had terrible results breeding my cybisters, and most of this years seed is just hybrid variety self-pollinated seed. It gives me something to test out my growing set-up with, so next year I'll be prepared. Lora, your crosses sound awesome, and I can certainly understand how it can be hard to choose keepers out of a batch of those seedlings! That would probably trip me up a bit, too... finally getting seed from a difficult cross you really wanted to work out, and then not having enough room to keep all the babies! Jackie, I don't know for certain, but I would think breeding hippis is no different than breeding daylilies or iris... you really have to give the plants more than one season in order to get accurate evaluations... in dog breeding, we can only get accurate evaluations from mature animals, and that can take a few years! I would think plants need to reach maturity in order to really perform as they will for the long haul... In any case... breeding anything takes a certain level of objectivity and responsibility in order to keep that species genetically solid. It also takes patience!