Hey Kim, just wanted to let you know I just checked on my seeds in the fridge, and to my surprise I had a stellar germination rate from the seeds that formed in a hip on ‘Arethusa’ with Lynnie pollen. It really had been on a whim to test if I was actually any good at applying pollen, and so I applied ‘Lynnie’ pollen (since it was there) on a Arethusa flower and reciprocated with ‘Arethusa’ on ‘Lynnie’. I put a string around the stem to the flower where I applied pollen and sure enough on ‘Arethusa’ a hip formed. On ‘Lynnie’ a hip was going to form no matter what, it always forms those shiny orange pumpkins so that was more of an afterthought.
The Lynnie x Arethusa haven’t germinated yet, but the germination for the reversed first cross sort of caught me off guard. I’m hoping this shows Arethusa’s potential as a good to excellent seed parent since it seems its seeds germinate well with nice vigor. Just planted them out in a tray.
I figure the results of this cross will probably be more shades of pink than I can bear (Lynnie is such an uncanny electric hot pink, straddling the line between beautiful and garish in the landscape) but I’m excited to see what will happen regardless, will post pictures of seedlings as they grow as they might end up being very cool due to Lynnie’s mixed heritage and that pretty “eyespot” of yellow stamens that bees (and I) really like. A plant that looks like Lynnie but in ‘Arethusa’ coloring would be pretty nifty.
Everyone should us Arethusa, I think it’s a very underused china.