The easiest sports to keep are the ones that happen to the tubers you plant. Some tubers may be the sport and others may be normal. HH Six in One was a red dahlia and some of the tubers sported to variegated the second year. There were two "strains" for many years. and almost no one like the original red one.
Many times just one branch of a plant sports and usually the sport does not go into the tubers. In that case, as Steve said, you need to root some cuttings of the sported portion of the plant. Easier said than done.
teddahlia wrote:The easiest sports to keep are the ones that happen to the tubers you plant. Some tubers may be the sport and others may be normal. HH Six in One was a red dahlia and some of the tubers sported to variegated the second year. There were two "strains" for many years. and almost no one like the original red one.
Many times just one branch of a plant sports and usually the sport does not go into the tubers. In that case, as Steve said, you need to root some cuttings of the sported portion of the plant. Easier said than done.
Well, maybe I lucked out and it went the easy way for me.
I also have a solid Snoho Les blooming for me. I love this monster plant and it's marble blooms. Hate dividing the crazy clump, but I'll take a solid bloom too.
Variegated flowers are variegated because of the jumping genes identified by Barbara McClintock who got a Nobel prize for her work on Transposons(one of the bigger words for jumping genes). The ADS recognized that variegated flowers go solid very often and then revert back to variegated. The transposons had jumped too far but returned to their normal place quite often. Therefore , they have a rule that solid sports of variegated flowers have to be grown as solid flowers for three full years before being eligible for seedling competitions. Most commercial old timers just throw away the solid stock as people only would buy the variegated ones anyway. .
I remembering studying transposons in college when working with animal genetics. First considered "trash DNA" now they are studying how these bits of DNA glue themselves seamlessly into another sequence. Lots to discover with gene sequencing and curing genetic diseases.
As dahlia breeders we are looking from the "outside in" to breed dahlias and the biochemical scientists are quite satisfied with looking at pieces of DNA., sort of an :inside out" approach. Ultimately, all of it is defined by the DNA but we get to putz along and do conventional plant breeding. Having said that, would you like to have blue pigment gene to incorporate in to your seedlings?
No, I would not like to introduce abnormal color to my dahlias. I think they are already little miracles and I don't try to tell them what to be. I just set up the possibilities. If I want to design my flowers to a certain color I think it would take the fun right out of it. We already have lovely blue flowers we can mix with our dahlias....they don't have to BE the blue in a bouquet.
Oh oh! Found a blooper by last years assistant...So far, all but one of my Salish Sunsplinters plants has produced a beautiful HH Dragonfire! SO glad I have at least one Sunsplinters and hope there are more of them, but also really pleased to have multiple plants of HH Dragonfire! I think that makes 5 plants of it. Wow, are they ever pretty!
Since many of you aren't on Instagram, here is a picture of a second year seedling. The seed was sold and grown by another but the grower shared tubers back with me. I'm so happy to see it in person this year. The parentage is unknown since her seeds were mixed.
Picture of a seedling. Cropped off the bottom of the flower as it is faded there. Since I have confessed to doing it, here is what the original looked like.
We may mark it to keep; I will ask Margaret.
That looks like Santa in Covid 19 season...going a bit shaggy and in need of a trim while waiting for the barbershop to open Maybe I could take a photo of my husband's head and edit it into a good haircut?
Sellwood Glory was a color sport of a 1936 dahlia called Ballego's Glory(Orange and yellow) and the sport happened in about 1950 in the garden of a Portland Dahlia Society member who lived in Sellwood, a small town gobbled up by the expansion of Portland. Our club had a challenge trophy for years for the best one in the show(ended before I joined the club).
When we were first growing seedlings, we gave a short tour to some garden visitors to have them pick out their favorite varieties. . Several people picked out Sellwood Glory as their favorite. It is a poor tuber maker-keeper although in an odd year, you might get a bunch of nice tubers. The next year you will probably lose all your stock. Old House Gardens sold it for years, but their stock of it was actually grown by Swan Island Dahlias under a private contract. The plants were located in a non public area. The Holland sellers used to sell it and it had a mis-spelled name on the package and I remember Glory was spelled Glorie or some such thing.
Name: Amanda CA Redwood Coast - Zone 9b DahliaAddict.com
I would guess less than half my plants have bloomed yet. But here is some Summer Rain. Vista Minnie and N-Force are blooming, but my phone turns them into magenta blobs.
Here's a dramatic re-enactment of my photo of N-Force which I like and will grow again.
Name: Amanda CA Redwood Coast - Zone 9b DahliaAddict.com
My image does make it look variegated, but I don't believe that it is. The reality is rather like Sellwood Glory in that the color changes are not smooth like you can see the 'pixels'.
Maybe I could take a photo of my husband's head and edit it into a good haircut?
