Hi Ohiofem,

Thank you for your reply!

About 8 of my seedlings were labeled Clivia miniata dark, broad leaf orange/red/and bronze and are from South Africa. These are fascinating me as even though they only have 3 leaves, they all have rather dark pigmented bases.. a couple are more lightly pigmented (I love saturated colors anyway so various shades of orange are OK with me)..and the leaves are somewhat different on each..some are shorter, fatter, most do appear to be going to be with wider leaves (I think).

I have some crosses that I bought from EBay that have green bases and these mostly have thinner leaves. And I have 4 newer just barely 2" seedlings and those too are all green(maybe it's too early for the base color to show(?)..and, I'm hoping for some peaches too..

I have a yellow seedling that has a dark base.. I think I'll have a smorgasbord of colors when they do bloom.

Thank you for your growing advice.. I have just been using Miracle Grow at a very week solution each time I water them and am using a very quick drying soil mix (the same I use for my amaryllis) and they are in tiny clay pots and receive bright light with only sun the last few hours of the day..I will move them to a brighert window with a bit more sun when I get the bulk of my amaryllis bulbs outside!!

I most definitly look forward to growing some variegated plants..the durumas in particular. I prefer the leaves with a moderate amoung of variegation as opposed to the duck(?) varieties with large splashed of white. Did you buy your plants from China or did you grow them from seeds? I do see the beautiful plants from China on EBay and I do a lot of drooling, but hesitate to buy a plant from that far away..seeds I may try but haven't yet..

As of today I have a total of 15.. who knows what next week will bring...;-)

Donna

I love your enthusiasm. I started out growing clivias in 2004 with one plant and six seeds from California that turned out to be very easy to grow. Then I went crazy and bought a bunch of seeds from China and South Africa, which turned out to be a lot more difficult as seedlings. In particular, seeds from variegated plants are a real roll of the dice. A mother plant with a lot of variegation is likely to produce albino offspring that can never survive. The best mother has only slight variegation, and usually no more than half of her seeds will produce variegated plants. All of those will be more difficult to grow than unvariegated plants. They grow more slowly and are easily sunburned. After investing more than a hundred dollars in seeds from international sellers, I only have two healthy variegated plants grown from seed. They both come from seed sold by Lily, a regular ebay seller from China. One has bloomed several times and I've been able to raise two more plants from seeds they produced. All of this is why I advise spending your money on plants that are a year or more old instead of gambling on unknown seed. I've gotten several nice variegated year old plants for less than $20 each.

Thanks for the info, I too now prefer to buy a plant at least a few years old..(I want to live to see it bloom)!! Still, the lure of exotic seeds seems to beckon me..I haven't ordered any yet, and I didn't realize that the percentage of albinos ould be so great,that's good to know. I guess if I do order seeds I'd better order at least 20+ seeds so like you I may end up with a couple of good ones. But then again I'll just probably stick to the trusted Ebayers that I've dealt with previously. I really prefer the ones with the pinstripes!..
I will have to cool it for a short while, I did order two small plants from EBay very recently and now I have to wait for them to arrive to see what I did indeed buy..

Thanks..

Donna: You asked about a photo of my Solomone Yellow on the other thread, but since that did not relate to the original post, I thought I would post some photos of my yellow and pale peach clivias here instead. There is unbelievable variation in clivias, especially if you grow them from seed. I got the two peaches in this group (Tessa and Sunrise Sunset) as offsets, so their flowers were very much as I expected. The two yellows (Solomone Yellow and Cynthia's Dream) didn't turn out very much like the photos of their parents, and in both cases I was pretty disappointed. These photos are from their first blooms. Later blooms are usually better, and often quite different.

Thanks for posting your pictures!!