A Tiger-Striped Spring

This Spring 2015 has been marked by the hot, bright, and sunny abutilon hybrids received as a result of cross-pollination between my own abutilon hybrid 'Tea Rose' and the well-known abutilon pictum 'Tiger Eye'. As a result, I have 20 seedlings -- some of which are very much alike, and others are the true masterpieces of Mother Nature.

The stature of the seedlings differs significantly -- from 10 inches to 25 by the first time of their blooming. The ability to maintain a short distance between two leaf nodes is an additional plus. Interestingly, some of the seedlings demonstrated a very short distance at the beginning, but further on they increased this length by 3-fold. Some seedlings are light and graceful, while others are sturdy and upright. So, as you can guess, choosing the best among the rest has been a difficult task for me so far. I still have 6 which haven't bloomed yet -- so more torture to go!

Anyway, here are some preliminary results. The #1 prize winner (I guess) is my 2015 hybrid 'Freya" with very distinctive flowers, a short and sturdy stature, and the ability to sprout shoots easily.

Abutilon 'Freya' 2015

Abutilon 'Freya' 2015

Abutilon 'Freya' 2015

The #2 prize winner is, perhaps, my hybrid 'Marmalade' with huge up to 4 inches flowers of a sweet, non-aggressive apricot color with bright orange veins and a short stature.

Abutilon 'Marmalade' 2015

Abutilon 'Marmalade' 2015

Abutilon 'Marmalade' 2015

 The #3 prize winner is a tall and graceful hybrid with dimmed but very contrastive colors of the yellowish petals -- abutilon 'Maya'.

Abutilon 'Maya' 2015

Abutilon 'Maya' 2015

Finally, the runner-up is my hybrid # 13 without a name yet. It has a very short length between the leaf nodes which does not change (luckily) and a curious blooming trait: its flowers start off as orange-red and end up as brownish-red. I love it, but my camera is unable to catch it!!!! :((( Maybe I should call it 'Devil's Dozen' -- the name will serve it right.

Abutilon hybrid # 13, 2015

Abutilon hybrid # 13, 2015

Anyway, like I said, I have 6 more to go -- maybe in a week I'll be able to assess more of my hybrids. If you have any ideas or comments -- either in Russian, or in English, or in German (or, come to think of it, in any other language that can be translated with the help of Google.Translate) -- write them here, and I'll be happy to read them and respond to them. You can also find me here http://vk.com/abutilon or write an email to me alenky@yahoo.com

Сезон 2015

Решила для разнообразия перейти на русский язык. Кстати, для тех, кто не знает: у меня уже давно есть группа ВКонтакте по адресу http://vk.com/abutilon  Буду рада видеть там!

И ещё новости: отремонтировали почтовое отделение в соседнем доме -- теперь я готова рассылать растения по России (в тёплое время года конечно и конечно небольшие укоренённые черенки). Если вы не числитесь в социальных сетях, то написать мне можно на адрес электронной почты: alenky@yahoo.com

Итак, сезон 2015. Увы, после длительного хранения в холодильнике семена прошлогодних опылений потеряли всхожесть. Жизнеспособных сеянцев крайне мало, но наверняка они крайне удачные! :)))

До сих пор процвела только половина детей Тигрового глаза -- зато как! Довольна пока всеми, а особенно некоторыми. Оставаясь компактными (20 см), растения демонстрируют полосатую окраску и достаточно приличный диаметр цветка (6 см). Любимец -- на первом фото поста (имя пока не придумалось), а вот ещё один:

абутилон, сеянец -- удачный товарищ!

абутилон, сеянц -- фактура хороша!

Сеянцы оказались в большинстве своём флегматичными -- в маму. Не у всех ещё появились бутоны, но я надеюсь на лучшее.

Кстати, придумался флэшмоб на этот сезон: попрактиковаться в выращивании абутилона в открытом грунте -- ну или хотя бы на открытом воздухе (в кадке на балконе). В связи с этим планирую вывоз части растений на дачу. В конце концов, проезд в поездах подорожал, и в город ради полива разоришься мотаться! :)))

Также этой весной порадовал Аурео Макулата ("золотистопятнистый"): цветение началось ещё зимой, но цветки были мелковаты. Приняла решение обрезать. Теперь ищу новый дом для черенков. Одно жаль: нет пыльцы...или пока нет пыльцы...

абутилон пестролистный

итог обрезки абутилона

И последнее: ращу и радуюсь один из своих же первых гибридов -- Цыпу. Флегматичен, но нежен, паразит. А ведь чуть не проглядела красавца! Главное -- меня умиляют его лиловые пестики! :)))

абутилон Цыпа

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

Dear all,

Happy holidays to you! As the 2014 year is coming to an end, I thought I should write a short assessment of the floral results I've achieved so far.
Well, this past season wasn't too fruitful in terms of pollination and new hybrids, although I do have a number of seeds in my refrigerator, awaiting the spring time to be sown. Anyway, here are just some quality plants that I grew the previous season. First of all, it's a number of yellow and orange hybrids with a red eye:

Makovka

Azart

Azart

Azart

Then, there was my favorite very compact hybrid of a dark peach color 'Tea Rose":

Tea Rose

Tea Rose

Besides, I focused on hybridizing the Tiger Eye hybrids, crossing them with my most compact hybrids and getting these:

Abutilon Carioca

...and a set picture of this:

Abutilon Carioca and snow

...and a really tiny 2-inch flower this:

Tyutel'ka

And, of course, I was trying to grow abutilon vitifolium from seeds:

abutilon vitifolium from seeds

Finally, here are just some nice pictures of my plants:

Good luck to you all! Have a great and blooming year 2015!

A Sunny Delight

a super-small abutilon hybrid

Can you guess the diameter of this flower? Oh, well, it started off with 1,5 inches (about 3 cm), but then reached 2 inches (5 cm), with the size of the whole plant being also slightly taller than 2 inches.

Yes, I'm getting there -- slowly but steadily hybridizing a super-compact, mini-, dwarf-, micro-, nano- (or whatever you want to call it) abutilon. I have a couple more hybrids that aren't blooming yet which demonstrate the same compact tendencies. Wait and see!

Sometimes I think that this wish to have a pretty, tiny plant has something to do with my hypopituitarism -- with me being short and loving it that way. Or maybe wanting to prove it to the world that something (or someone) non-standard, non-fitting within the conventional framework, exceptional -- can be exceptionally good and much wanted... Maybe I'm trying to instill tolerance in insidious ways -- via abutilons...

 

compact abutilon hybrid 2014

Anyway, here are some more of my abutilon hybridization results of this year AND much awaited well-known hybrid of abutilon megapotamicum 'Ines' ... blooming indoors, St. Petersburg, Russia.

I had a number of sunny hybrids like this one

just a showy red, my hybrid 2014

my new hybrid, 2014

abutilon hybridum megapotamicum 'Ines'

abutilon hybridum megapotamicum 'Ines'

I would love to read your comments! Let's share experience.

In Full Bloom

abutilon 'Ella' and my dog

It's autumn up here, which means it's not so hot anymore, and there's still enough sunlight. Abutilons on my enclosed balcony are in full bloom -- and when I say in full bloom, I really mean it: they demonstrate their maximum (for this latitude) corolla size.

Abutilon 'Ella"

'Ella' is especially delightful this year -- and I'm delighted, too. I think I managed to capture its airy character with a bit of natural light. So, here are some more photographs...

abutilon 'Ella'

abutilon 'Ella'

Barasha and 'Ella' -- again

I Have A Dream...

I do! My dream is to have a compact and obedient abutilon hybrid devoid of any plant-related problems. Showy flowers. Sturdy stature. Easily pruned and propagated. The dream is still a dream...

Meanwhile, I've been looking into ways to improve my plants' life. One of them was mentioned in the previous post -- clay! I've started adding clay to soil, about 20% of the total amount. Here's what it looks like:

Some compound soil components

Yummy! Abutilons love it!

Then, to improve the pruning procedure, I started removing the big leaves which use up too many nutrients and hinder the development of the adventitious buds.

In addition, I started practicing root trimming while re-potting the plants. This is what it looks like:

Extra rings of roots need to be removed, or they may rot

I shear the extra roots off

It's perfect. The abutilon plant won't even notice the loss.

Finally, I understand that it might sound stupid to the learned scholars of botany, but I dream of propagating abutilon via leaf grafting. So far I managed to get the roots, but then the leaf would wither and die. I do hope I can do something to make it live and develop an adventitious bud. Mother Nature is a very rational woman: why would a leaf develop roots if it wasn't going to survive?..

Crazy Summer

This summer has been crazy so far. It started off with a long heatwave which, in my case, resulted in losing 18 of my plants – some of which didn't even have doubles.
This happened to some bacterial infection received with the ready-made soil purchased in a shop. High humidity and high temperature awoke this "ancient evil" so to say. Bacterial wilting, as the scientific name goes, shows itself on the 5th day with a leaf or two wilting. At first you think it is nothing, just too much sunlight, but the next thing you know is that it is too late.
In my case, Bella Yellow wilted within hours; other plants wilted more gradually, so that I eventually managed to save three of them.
Anyway, losing so many plants left room for contemplation and research. Here are some conclusions: acidic soils are more prone to the development of bacterial diseases, so I switched to the neutral one. A great addition that I now use to improve the soil is clay. Clay has a number of benefits, which you can read about in Wikipedia. All I can say is that my abutilons love clay!

This summer, as planned, I wanted to experiment with cross-pollination even further, although losing hybrids and starting from scratch again (that is from green cuttings) set me a bit back. But! I already have started pollinating with Alcea, Sidalcea and Hibiscus pollen.
Alcea x abutilon pollinations were quite successful last year, but hibiscus x abutilon weren't. Here is my guess: fancy, large flower hibiscus hybrids will not cross-pollinate with abutilons. However, some wild varieties might.