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Plant Portrait Seed Grown Azalea By
Roslyn
Duffus This
year one of the first rhododendrons I have grown from seed flowered. I
ordered the seed from the ARHS seed list in February 2000 but did not get
around to planting it until January 2001. I planted out five seedlings from
three seed lots in the summer of 2001 and left them to take their chances. I
may have covered them with pine needles their first winter. Two were
deciduous azaleas and the other three were evergreen, so I assumed they were
rhododendrons. I then ignored them until the summer of 2004 when I built a
new bed specifically to hold some of my collection of small rhodies. They
had survived for three seasons in spite of too much shade and too little
attention to feeding and watering. When they were moved two of the rhodos
showed much improved growth and I want to tell you about the one that
flowered this summer. Since
labels have a habit of going missing, I checked the descriptions of the
three seed lots and I concluded that this seedling was most likely from seed
donated by John Weagle. After describing the plant to John, he agreed that
this was from his cross of R. Laura Morland x ( nakaharai
Orange Form x
kiusianum Mt. Fuji) F2 – a dwarf white evergreen
azalea. This little plant is only about eight inches tall and has white
flowers. Some of the flowers have pinkish stripes that run from the edge to
the centre. John tells me that thee flowers are sectored and that this is an
unstable feature that is sometimes found in the mother plant Laura
Morland. Since Laura Morland and nakaharai ‘Orange form’
are not reliably hardy, John used kiusianum to give hardiness. It
remains to be seen how big this plant gets but the largest leaves on the
oldest branches are only one inch long. It
is late November as I write and this little azalea is in the process of
dropping all but the leaves at the ends of the branches, which is normal,
and it has set good buds for next year. I look forward to seeing it again
next summer. I
also expect to see flowers next spring on plants I grew from seed I
collected from some of my own plants in 2003.
Patience has its rewards. Give it a try. |