"Will this yellow 'Son of Sunrise' be more likely to have yellow flowered offspring?"

Yes, it will be more likely. I see that you understand the probabilistic nature of plant breeding. So, if the seeds are selfed and not already crossed with a purple variety, you can increase your "odds" by growing a lot of seed from your Echinacea Sunrise. There is even a chance that you could get a better yellow Echinacea that way.

By the way, did you see the blue Echinacea linked in EchinaceaManiac's message?

MM

It was correct when I said "you can increase your "odds" by growing a lot of seed from your Echinacea Sunrise" but I meant to say you can increase your "odds" by growing a lot of seed from the yellow seedling from your Echinacea Sunrise.

You could also try back-crossing from any yellow seedlings to the yellow parent(s). If you get more than one yellow progeny from that yellow seedling, you could also try inter-crossing among them.

And you can multiply your original yellow seedling and any yellow progeny from it by asexual reproduction and that can give you an even larger seed supply to help "beat the odds".

MM

In April of this year, I also started seeds I got from Sunrise. I have a couple of dozens of these seedlings that are starting to bloom now. The results I'm getting are completely different from that. The first one to open is all white, it looks like a small "White Swan", only about 18" high. I have 3 others that are very close to be fully opend and none of them show any signs that they will have pink shades in them, they will most likely be white or yellow as far as I can tell now on 24" plants.

My Sunrise is grown very close to Art's Pride, Razzmatazz, Double Decker and White Swan. The bees did the pollination, not me, and I also started seeds fron all these plants as well except White Swan, none are close enough to bloom to tell what they are going to look like yet but the first ones should bloom within 2 weeks.

I just saw your post. That's very interesting that you got different results. Are the flower petals completely opened? I have a few plants that the flowers started out looking like they were going to be yellow or white but as the petals got bigger/older they turned pinkish/purple. I also tried growing 'Mango' but all of those seedlings turned out pinkish/purple. All of my seed was obtained through trades. I would love to try some of your echinacea seeds. Want to trade? If so, see my seed trade list and email me at icotte2 at comcast dot net. Gardenweb does not seem to be forwarding my emails.

Melba

Yes.

>>I have a few plants that the flowers started out looking like they were going to be yellow or white but as the petals got bigger/older they turned pinkish/purple.<<

The first one opened almost 3 weeks ago and the color hasn't changed, The second one has been opened for almost 2 weeks, the color hasn't changed either.

>>I would love to try some of your echinacea seeds. Want to trade?<<

Right now I don't have any of these seeds left to trade, and they all finished blooming and I haven't kept the seeds this year, may be next year. The fact that I have some blooming now is because they were sowed in April, so they are late in blooming and they wont all make it into bloom, we already had 2 nights below freezing point. I'll better be able to see the results next year. In the mean time, if anyone wants to see what the first 3 seeds of Sunrise have been like for me up to now, please follow this link, and I'll update it if I do get more to bloom before hard frost:

http://homepage.mac.com/lauriernappert/Echinaceas/index.html