Nev

Some Neo's have red seed capsules, like johannis and cruenta and most of their hybrids. So nothing wrong with your plants! And the couple of seeds that germinated, maybe you left the seed capsules too long after they ripened before you harvested them so they got impatient and started sprouting!

Japie

Definitely genetic, Nev, and the color of the berries may be a clue to the heritage of your unnamed Neo. As Japie said, johannis and cruenta have red berries rather than white, and compacta is another. Also correia-araujoi (which may or may not be a johannis). The paler red they are, the more likely the genes have been watered down, so a pink-fruited Neo is almost certainly a hybrid.

Do you have a photo of mother? Is it that noname quiz plant?

Hi everyone,

Japie and Lisa, thanks for the feedback.

No Lisa that plant isn't the noname quiz plant, it's one I picked up somewhere (I don't remember where) as an unnamed seedling. I'll take a pic tomorrow and post it.

Thanks again, all the best, Nev.

Hi everyone,

Sorry to lead you astray, but it turns out the plant in question wasn't Noname but a seedling with the name tag pushed right down into the pot. I did this last year when Bower Birds kept stealing the name tags from the pots. (Whoever said Bower Birds will only steal blue things didn't tell our local Bower Birds, or maybe they're colour blind)

Anyway, the plant is a seedling from Neo. (Charm x Cracker Jack) x self which was from my second seed raising effort. I probably kept this plant because I liked the pinkish colour of the foliage it exhibits when viewed from below.

Unfortunately even after a few attempts, I can't capture the true colour of the seed pods with the camera and they appear much lighter than the pinkish/red they really are.

Anyway, for what they're worth, here are the pic's:

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Thanks for your help, all the best, Nev.

Hi Nev, just as well those those satin bower birds of yours haven't found the Neo flowers!

Mum and Dad used to have a colony of them on their 3 acre block up near Forster and they couldn't keep anything blue outside. Eventually they just gave in and started putting out lots of blue plastic clothes pegs and bottle tops that the birds collected up and used to decorate their bowers in the garden. Probably didn't help anything else, and it certainly didn't stop them stealing all the cumquats, but at least it was a bit of fun.

Maybe if you give them a whole lot of blue things they might leave your white labels alone. But then again they are pretty loopy maniacs, so maybe not.

Cheers, Paul

Hmmm...... the plot thickens. Interesting berries, Nev. They not only have reddish ovaries but the sepals are red too. N. johannis, cruenta and correia-araujoi have red ovaries with green sepals. Compacta (and macwilliamsii?) have both ovaries and sepals the same red color, but there's nothing in either the appearance of your plant or its parents to suggest either of those species, so I'm guessing the colored sepals and ovaries came from two different sources.

Looking at the parents, 'Charm' is marmorata x chlorosticta (although many, if not most, plants in cultivation under those names are actually hybrids, so it's possible there could be more to it than that). It's got the dark red sepals of the chlorosticta side of the family. Actually, they're marmorated, same as the foliage, but if the foliage loses its marmoration in the genetic shuffle (as yours has), the sepals would lose it too. The parentage of 'Cracker Jack' is unknown. It's also a marmorated plant, probably with some chlorosticta in its background too, but wherever the red ovaries are coming from must be hiding in there too. Looking at your F2 seedling, I'm leaning towards johannis being the culprit, but there is so much else going on there it's hard to say.

Not that any of this matters much, at least not to most people. I just enjoy genetic sleuthing, and the apperance of the fruits can tell you things that the foliage can't. Also, from a hybridizer's point of view, every bit of information you can glean about parentage will help you to better predict results. Otherwise you're just flying blind! What you see is not always what you get....

Below is a photo of the harvested ripe berries (with pollen tags, names facing away) of 3 different Neos. The bottom one is fairly typical of the genus in general, so no clues there (it happens to be Screaming Tiger, but there's nothing distinctive about its appearance). The middle one is johannis with telltale red ovaries and green sepals. The top one is Winnie the Pooh (Treasure Chest x olens), and although the plant itself is marmorated (like the seed parent), the reddish sepals are a clear indication of its olens heritage.

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(Gee, if I'd know the pic was going to come out this big I would have shrunk it down more! Probably should have cleaned up the tags a bit too, huh?)

In this photo correia-araujoi is on the left, and Kiko on the right. Kiko is c-a x olens, and the berries are just as red as the seed parent, but you can see the olens influence in the paler sepals (olens has no chlorophyll in the sepals) with reddish spots. It's toned down, but its there, and very evident in the markings of plant itself.

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One last photo for anyone who finds this sort of thing interesting. This one's a bit of a puzzle. On the left is johannis 'French Form' (aka French's Cruenta), and on the right is one of its hybrids: 'Royal Grande'.

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First off, notice how much paler the FF berries are than the johannis (Fairchild?) in the first pic above, or even correia-araujoi in the second. The current ruling from the BIC is that all 3 of these are forms of johannis, and the appearance of c-a's fruits may lend credence to this, the red not being as watered down as you might expect if it were a natural hybrid. Of course if and when my johannis x marmorata seedlings mature, I will be comparing the appearance of the fruits to c-a. If they are paler pink I may have to concede the point. ;-)

On the other hand, FF's fruits have a hybrid appearance to me. I suppose the fruit color in a species could be as variable as the foliage color, but this just gives me one more reason to suspect it too may be a natural hybrid. Based on the foliage apparance my other suspected parent is spectabilis, but I'm not seeing its dark sepals here so again, I'll have to wait until my spect x joh seedling mature and compare.

Now, on to 'Royal Grande'. If anything, its berries are darker than that of its daddy on the left, and more of a purplish tinge. So where the heck did that come from? Presumably from the other parent, which in this case is 'Takemura Grande'. The parentage of TG is given as "carcharodon(?) X concentrica(?)". In those days "carcharodon" usually meant pascoaliana, so I'm assuming pasc and conc are involved, but neither of those really explains the dark ovaries, unless it's just a case of the predominantly red pigment in the whole plant being purpled up by concentrica? The mystery continues....

As usual, way more information than you asked for, Nev, so feel free to ignore any or all of it. ;-)

Hi Lisa,

Thanks a lot for your "detective work" and accompanying explanation.

This reinforces more than ever what I seem to be learning about brom's as I go along, and that is, there are many, many factors to be considered when trying to identify plants.

Thanks heaps for going to so much trouble to explain some of these facts to me.

All the best, Nev.