Genealogy or Inheritance in Adeniums
David
Mark & Robert
You are stuck with your ancestors, you cannot change them. So how do we go about recording them?
We could use a genealogy table as per this one for Rose ‘Super Star’:
So the hybrid I showed yesterday would look something like this:
However, I have always found the system of Sally & Greer most useful when I was hybridizing rhododendrons. Here is their entry for 'C.I.S.':
'C.I.S.' was the rhodo. equivalent for me of 'Star of Tomorrow'; they rarely give a bad seedling. From Sally & Greer I saw that one grandparent was R. arboreum which will give large plants, often with beautiful peeling bark, the next grandparent is R. griffithianum, a very tender species, which in England will only survive in a frost free greenhouse. Its flowers are huge, lily like over 6 inches in diameter and scented, (this rhodo was frequently grown in the conservatories of the big porcelain factories, so that the flowers could be used as models for their artists to hand paint their porcelain). This will pass on large flowers to its progeny and is recessive for hardiness. R. dichanthum a wonderful orange-scarlet of heavy substance, dominant for colour and finally R. griersonianum large papery flowers but of a lovely colour.
Without knowing the parentage of this hybrid from Sally & Greer, I would not have used this hybrid for the many successful crosses with it that I did. We need something similar for Adeniums. I cannot see why we do not just use this system. If not this one, then what?
I chose the rose 'Super Star' as it has an interesting history. In 1937 Mathias Tantau became interested in breeding with a wild rose from China Rosa multibracteata. He knew that for such a project one should allow at least twenty years; in fact it was twenty-three years before his son reaped the reward of that initiative. 'Super Star' was a hybrid tea rose of rosy vermilion colour, the like of which had never been seen before. This came from the R. mutibracteata line started by Mathias senior in 1937. It had been the promise of many a rose breeder to his wife, that his finest rose shall bear her name; but as perfection is always in the future, a long wait is her normal lot. Mathias proposed to honour his wife by naming his wonderful rose 'Isle Tantau'. However, Eugene Boerner of Jackson & Perkins, who was preparing to introduce it to America, pleaded for a name the whole world could remember, and suggested 'Super Star', a proposition of such sound business sense that Mathias reluctantly agree. Alas for Gene Boerner's brainwave! The name was considered an infringement of that used by another American company, 'Star Roses', and in America the rose became known as 'Tropicana'.
I do hope that we will keep just one name for any new hybrid, wherever it is introduced.
Mark - why not give us a grex name for A.crispum x A. obesum? Possibly Tucson or Sonora. You were the first to make the hybrid, you should be the one to name it.