... growing and hybridizing all kinds of plants in zone 6b Maryland since the 1980's.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Viola arvensis x pansy

I ran across these old pictures that have got me itching to start some more of these breeding lines.
For all, I used the weedy "field pansy" Viola arvensis with its tiny flowers, as seed parent and pollinated by various cultivated gigantic flowered pansies. Here's the growth habit of Viola arvensis in fertile soil (see brick in picture for size).
 This size comparison shows how radically different the two parents are.
 The following are various F1 populations... first arvensis X 'Blue Angel' pansy
 arvensis X 'Frosty Rose' pansy
 arvensis X unlabeled dark red pansy
 arvensis X unlabeled yellow edged pansy
 Here's one of my favorite advanced generation lines (apricot) with a large orange pansy flower for comparison.
 Here's a sibling to the previous one - also beside an orange pansy.
This was a fun project!
I've tried to germinate the old seeds of these lines but had no luck, so I plan to recreate them and try to get them to naturalize this time so I don't have to worry so much about losing the seeds to old age.

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