Do you cull young seedlings that develop a bloom with a vegetative center or do you give them a chance to grow out of that trait? More importantly DO they ever grow out of that habit?
My seedlings that had vegitative centers didn’t out grow it. I didn’t cull them because I wanted to see if they had any other qualities like hardiness or disease resistant. Not every flower is going to have the vegitative center so it is possible use them in your breeding program, but that trait can be passed on the offspring.
I usually cull them once it’s obvious that’s going to be their norm. The one I maintained, remained vegetative and had other disease issues which led to its going away.
The ones I have kept longer some of them did improve. But all of them seem to throw them at certain times of the year. Most however seem to never improve at all.
Unless that “fault” is something you intend to explore, you’re probably better off dumping them, unless they are so vastly superior as a plant than any of the others. Even then, you run a great risk of creating a vegetative line and we’ve all read the complaints about those in commercial lines. As a “feature”, it could make an interesting novelty as long as the plant under it is good, which hasn’t seemed the case in my experience. Nature just doesn’t seem to waste good genes on types which couldn’t succeed on their own without our “unnatural selection”.
I came here as a floral designer. Quite a few Ecuadorian roses are being sold and marketed as “having an unique succulent type center”. I find them not acceptable for wedding work. A bride I am working with wanted a specific rose variety because it was so pretty. I researched it because I hadn’t worked with it before. I found professional photos full of vegetative centers. I showed her and her comment was a long the lines of it looking like tufts of grass and absolutely not. I guess in 2024, they’re trying to prevent loss and marketing these as unique and funky for those brides who like the unusual. Nice to find out, it’s actually an understandable defect. Thanks for the information!
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Welcome, @Paula_Byrd! Novelties will probably always sell. I have long used Viridiflora as filler in a vase of roses because only a rose stem lasts as long as other rose stems without creating “slime”. Now there are carnations and other flowers with the extreme vegetative growths to serve the same function.