Jeb - you will need another shelving unit!

Your plants look gorgeously healthy ...

Jeb, the one on the left looks like the real Blue-Eyed Russian to me from all the pics I've seen. Currently I have a beautiful sport of Optimara Chico that is re-sporting into a third coloration. I love this whole thing of having these surprises.

So do sports only reproduce true if they are from a sucker and not from a leaf?

Thanks for the nice compliment about the health of my AV's, today I went out and bought two new fluorescent light fixtures because I am completely out of growing space.
African Violet sports will produce{{gwi:807}} identical plants from leaves - chimeras are a specific kind of sport that usually have a distinct colored stripe down each flower petal and can only be propagated successfully from suckers or divisions of multiple crowned plants. Since chimeras are much slower to reproduce and produce, they usually are much more expensive. It has been my experience that some varieties are more (or less) stable than others, and tend to vary a bit in their characteristics from time to time even on the same plant. It keeps things interesting!

Jeb

This post was edited by jebfarm on Sun, Jan 6, 13 at 16:33

Jeb, Gwen -

there is no 100% guarantee that your suckers or leaves will give you identical plants. Most of the time - yes - but there still would be a subtle difference between the plants and you can leave the best of them for yourself.
Plants with fantasy flowers - will have different amount of fantasy on each of the babies - and plants with frilly flowers and wavy leaves - which is connected - will come up with extremes - flat leaves and no frills - or super wavy and super frilly. Just like your Blue Eyed Russia. You keep the one that fits the description in FC2 - and you look at the sport - and decide - if it is better than original or very good and significantly different - and if you propagate it 3 times - will it stay stable. If you definitely can say yes - you can name it and register as a sport under your name.

Good Luck

Irina

PS I do not grow "BER" - but I saw it before - and it seems to me that it should be something in between 2 plants Jeb grows. IMHO it is not different enough to register - but but both plants are lovely for your own enjoyment - and you can call them BER1 and BER2 for your own bookkeeping.

I.