Those are SO! NEAT! My fav's totally the Aloe 'Dragon'!

Jo

You seem to have a preference for South American pokies. Maybe that will help narrow down your search a bit :-)

x

Those Aloes are stunning. Nice pictures.

That "gargoyle" is great looking!!

Thanks for sharing these great photos of wonderful plants. I like KZ's 'DZ' and 'Gargolye' most. Gotta start looking for KZ hybrids, but $100 for these new ones? Wow. Kelly has some fierce competition developing. I know someone who sold an no-name Kelly Griffin hybrid pup for $180 recently. It's getting Crazy out there.

Brad

The Huntington is planning an ISI of some KZ hybrids next year. You better believe I'll pull every string I can to get my hands on some!

I was thinking how outrageous those prices were the other day when it finally dawned on me: these people are buying them to propagate! A rooted pup of any of these plants would quickly sell for $15. You would only have to sell 10 pups to make your money back. For these "rare" hybrids that haven't been widely released, you could probably sell enough to pay for the plant in only a couple years, well before the commercial growers swamp the market and depress the prices...

The interesting question is whether or not the hybridizers know or care about this. If I wanted to protect my hybrids, I would try to come up with hybrids that *didn't* make very many offsets. That way, the only practical way to propagate them would be through tissue culture. That way, you could keep control of who is propagating, and subsequently selling the plants.
The Aloe scene really is crazy. Everyone is churning out hybrids, but without any kind of central list or registry, it is becoming a giant mess! Things are constantly mislabeled, and now I see sellers making up there own names! It is very reminiscent of the lawless, wild-west. just with Aloes instead of cows!

Does anyone know which of my Hybrids are Kelly Griffin? I have some that I know labeled as such, but I'm some of the others are his. 'Doran Black,' 'Wunderkind,' and some others are missing the name of the hybridizer...

"It finally dawned on me: these people are buying them to propagate!"

That's the justification I use when paying a lot for rare hybrids :)

"it is becoming a giant mess! Things are constantly mislabeled, and now I see sellers making up there own names! It is very reminiscent of the lawless, wild-west."

Sellers making up their own names isn't a particularly new practice, but it would be nice if folks kept better records. I've grown accustomed to this already since the Echeveria hybrid field has been a mess since it started 40 years ago. When I get a reliable name, I make sure to keep it attached to my plants, but many of them are just going to remain unknown.

Doran Black is an R. Wright creation with a complex and unknown lineage. Wunderkind is deltoideodonta somaliensis var marmorata. I found that here at Lapshin.org. It's a nice list of parentage for lots of hybrids, but the hybridizers are often left out.

"Does anyone know which of my Hybrids are Kelly Griffin? I have some that I know labeled as such, but I'm (sure) some of the others are his."

The only name I got for several new acquisitions was "Kelly Griffin Hybrid". I now the grower, so find this credible information. It seems Kelly has used a number of different naming schemes: KG-##, fanciful names, just his name. If he can get away with it, good for him. The problem is that down the road a bit folks will start making up their own names for his clones. Add the problem that apparently his employer owns the rights to many of his creations, whatever that means. I'd be surprised to see them trying to sue over unlicensed propagation of Kelly Griffin hybrids. It is my understanding that Kelly is not trying to maintain any of these clones, it is the rest of us that do that. He is on a quest to make the 'perfect aloe', and they just keep getting better and better. Last years crop is already compost. ;)

Here is what Bob, thistlesifter, had to say about Doran Black's origins on another forum linked below:

Over the years I've learned that Dick will answer many direct questions with direct answers. But there is a mutual respect we have developed in the protocol of our plant relationship that avoids certain details that would seem to violate mutual trusts. There are several of these and one is I never ask a direct question relating to unknown constituent species in a cultivar. Having said that, sometimes there are things that are assumed and to those assumptions we discuss details.

Dick has indicated in our conversations about his 'little Aloes' that much of the breeding that led up to 'Doran Black' was done by another hybridizer that I don't know much about John Bleck. I have another of Dick's Aloe plants that he has tagged - John Bleck. Dick doesn't approach assigning a name lightly. All of his named cultivars that are named in honor of associates are done with much consideration.

The plant that had been developed in part from John Bleck had been involved with work done by Doran Black, Dick added the finishing touches to it and got the resulting 'Doran Black' hybrid that we are familiar with today. All that discussion and I don't have a clue as to what all the constituents are. Its not too important to me.

For many years Dave Grigsby worked to perfect A. descoingsii hybrid. Dave believed, and I believe Dick shared the belief that there were powerful potentials that could be unlocked from development of A. descoingsii lines. One of the early 'named' Aloe culitvars from Dick was 'David Grigsby'. Dave was an honorable and loyal friend to many of us who knew him well. Dave and Dick had collaborated several times to develop interesting culitivars some of which are commonly seen around the world today.

So I am reasonably satisfied that there is A. descoingsii DNA in Doran Black'. Doran Black is an amazing cultivar! Dicks collection of 5000 Aloe taxon cultivars contain Doran Black with varying degrees descoingsii cultivar mixes. His Aloe project began right after his entire succulent nursery was burned to the ground in 1984. So he has been breeding these 'Little Aloes' for 24+ years. I have notions of what some of the 5 other constituent species are in the the Doran Black mix.

Dick does a lot of highly disciplined selection. His philosophy for retaining a plant and not destroying it is: 'I get rid of any hybrid seedling that I wouldn't buy myself'. Given that his is a rare eye for succulents beautiful and unusual, he expresses a unique art form in his selections.

For awhile some who were aware of this 'castoff' practice would scout the green trash he dumped in a ravine adjoining his remote country home property and scavenge his castoffs. When he learned of this he began destroying the castoffs. So there has been very little of his Aloe work that has gotten away from him that he didn't intend to go.

He has told me many times that he won't sell an Aloe till his cultivar count has reached 10,000. He then intends to sell the entire lot to a large lab that will name, prop and produce millions of plants for worlwide distrubution.

I think this may be Dick's legacy. He is known now for his lifelong work with Echeveria cultivars (which continues). One day his Aloe culitvars will have books dedicated to them. He learned from his work with Echeveria how much a named cultivar can be bastardized when its un-named and lesser quality siblings are presented to the world without names. Naming confusion rules at a low level. But the ones he intended to have names that stick - have names that stick!

Here is a link that might be useful: Small Aloe Cultivars thread at TGF

Wow. That is awesome Brad. Give me some time and I'll come back with something intelligent to say, but for now THANKS!!!