One thing I really like about c-a is that it performs so well in a garden setting. Many Neo’s deteriorate quickly after flowering, but here’s a photo of c-a still looking good over 12 mths after flowering.

This photo shows a couple of seedlings selected from the batch of c-a x ‘Gold Fever’. They’re now about 14 mths from seed, & are starting to show potential. The ‘default setting’ for marmorated hybrids seems to be washed out reddish colouration with fine spots, so to have some showing a hint of the rich ‘Gold Fever’ colour, & nice defined marmoration is encouraging. Of interest is that the larger seedling on the right was the largest seedling out of the batch as shown in the post of July ‘07, and could have turned out to be just a ‘big green weed’. Now I’m hoping that the colouration will continue to intensify as they develop, and they will get to the size of c-a...if they do, and then I’ll have achieved my goal of creating a large tough, well coloured plant for landscaping.

I did a few more crosses with c-a last year too, but so far I'm not seeing anything that looks quite as nice as that. You're right about the "default setting" being washed out color with small spots, and I'm getting a lot of that. One cross that does look like it could be interesting is the one with Tiger, though. They're still small, but starting to show some markings in the tray.

I hit all my seedlings with a foliar feed about a month ago and they still haven't grown out of it, so the green is obscuring a lot of the markings I might otherwise be able to see at this point. Still, you can see they're all strongly discolor, that is to say dark on the underside of the leaf but not on the top. Just looking at some of my other seedlings this seems to be a fairly common trait of both c-a and Tiger hybrids, at least in the seedling stage. So far they look fairly uniform too. If they stay that way it may lend support to the premise that c-a is a species and not a natural hybrid, as one would expect more variation from 3 species ancestors than from 2. At any rate, I'm fairly sure they will be monsters!

I like BIG spotties that can handle lots of sun.....Keep us updated.

Dennis

About 2 yrs ago, our society seed bank received a batch of Neo. correia-araujoi seed. It was said to be the result of a cross between 2 c-a clones. Unfortunately the seed had a poor germination percentage, & I only got 5 seedlings out of the batch, however, they’ve grown well, & are now showing a range of markings, the 2 at the back are just green with red nails (very johannis like), while 3 at the front show varying degrees of marmoration.

This one has only developed a touch of colour on the leaf surface over the last couple of months, but the marmoration on the underside developed early on.

These results seem to be similar to others that have grown c-a from seed, & promotes the debate re species vs natural hybrid. What ever is it correia-araujoi is in the top 10 of my ‘must have’ Neo list.

BTW…does anyone know who correia-araujoi was…? So many broms are linked to this name, but I cannot trace it back to its source.

How would one pronounce that name?

Am I close? I think someone once wrote a song about him.

Devo,

Your top Neo is certainly a beauty. Your pup looks a lot like a Mamoretta.

Rick

And Winter, those last few may well all end up in the trash, or under the lawn mower…which is my preferred culling technique as it leaves no chance to second guess! I grew that c-a seed batch as a trial just to see what would come out of it…and since I already have a good clone of c-a (top photo) one of the c-a seedlings will have to develop into something just as good, to justify holding onto it. There are so many ‘average quality’ marmorated hybrids around already, & I have no desire to add to that pool…but there is great potential to create hybrids suited to our temperate climate by using choice plants like correia-araujoi, so I’ll be watching my c-a hybrids with interest to see how they develop over the next few years…