Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Another try for some red in a perennial sunflower
These are the seeds I'm hoping will grow into red-eyed perennial sunflowers. They're from pollen of a red-eyed annual sunflower (Helianthus annuus) that I put on nine flowers of Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus). Since there were almost eight seeds per flowerhead (and open-pollinated Jerusalem Artichoke usually has relatively few seeds here) I'm thinking I've got a good chance this time.
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ReplyDeleteVery interested to see your results with this.
ReplyDeleteThanks Starry! In addition to these 70 seeds, I picked through a couple hundred flower heads from my Gapland Gold which has never made a single seed in the past two years. This year, I'd pollinated it heavily with red-eyed annual sunflower pollen. Well a couple of hours of picking got me five seeds!!! Hopefully one of these backcross seeds will be perennial, red-flowered and long blooming like Gapland Gold.
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