Dear all
After seeing the picture of Pauls ventricusum I started to wonder if anyone is trying to make a red hybrid. With red I meen firetruck or Coca cola red.
http://www.slipperorchidforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5557
I have only seen coca cola red with the tone of yellow rather than blue/purpule by natural ventricusum. Any artificial mix of red (macranthos + family) with yello seems to give red with blue tone and yellow flowers.

Is there any atemt to get the red one by selecting ventricusums and breed within?

I think that would be a nice flower if sucsessfull.

Kind regards
Joakim

After seeing the picture of Pauls ventricusum I started to wonder if anyone is trying to make a red hybrid. With red I meen firetruck or Coca cola red.
http://www.slipperorchidforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5557
I have only seen coca cola red with the tone of yellow rather than blue/purpule by natural ventricusum. Any artificial mix of red (macranthos + family) with yello seems to give red with blue tone and yellow flowers.

Is there any atemt to get the red one by selecting ventricusums and breed within?



Hi, Joakim,

I am growing up many ventricosum seedlings in hope of finding exceptionally red ones. I would also like to use Paul's bright red in a back cross to my Cyp macranthos Irkutsk (see post in Cypripedium Gallery from May 2005). I am also raising seedlings of macranthos crossed with very red acaule (although from crosses I have seen by others acaule is not good about transmitting its red coloration).

I suspect that the best way to fix a uniform bright red will be to use the reddest macranthos crossed to pubescens/parviflorum/calceolus as nature has nice examples of uniformly-colored macranthos and natural and artificial crosses of macranthos with the yellow cyps yields some very nice bright reds, as well as the crosses among red ventricosum and macranthos.

Tibeticum might also be a good parent but the tibeticum's that I have all run to purple rather than the reddish ones. But a purple tibeticum crossed with a yellow Cyp might yield some nice reds as well.

Time will tell!

Ron Burch

The only other possible parent species I could think of would be C. froschii with its bright pink/purple flowers. I agree with Ron that some of the C. macranthos are the most red Cyps out there (except Paul's ventricosum!).

I am also raising seedlings of macranthos crossed with very red acaule (although from crosses I have seen by others acaule is not good about transmitting its red coloration).

Interesting Ron, you never mentioned those crosses to me before. Last year I heard about a grower here with C. macranthos x C. japonicum seedlings. The only problem was he wanted $100 a pop for each! Wow!

Hi Ron
I am looking forward to see Your result. It sounds intersting mixis that most likely will give some very nice flowers.
The small problem I see with machranthos is that the red has a slight bluish tone even in your lovely Irkutsk version Ron.
http://www.slipperorchidforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=873
That will be hard to get away from if the firetruck red is the desired color.
The hybrids between red and yellow have almost always have a lot of veins or patches of yellow so that they are not uniform. For example Gisela that is red and yellow. Maybe amongst the many Giselas ther is some that is more red and can be used.
Malmgren has tested to (back) cross venticusum with calceolus and gotten slower (calceolus) growing plants. This is offcourse the wrong way color wise but shows that the nice growth habits might be lost in some crossings with ventricosum.
Maybe the use of yellows with a red spott (or lipsick mark) would give more red hybrids tham "normal" yellows? Has there been any evidence for that? I think some of the american Yellows with a red kiss have been used in breeding, but I have not seen if they give a "redder" offspring to be used in further breeding with ventricusum.

Using tibeticum would most likely get an even "bluer" color as well as shorter (stems of) flowers.

Ther might offcourse be nice surprices that not are totally logical so the wide approch would most likely give an interesting result.

It will be interserting to see the results of this hunt for reds and other hunts for white.

Hope you are successfull and that more is working towards this.
I think Ron meansead that there is some work in getting nice strands of Mac in the US maybe by Bill Steele?
It would be interstigto hear if there is some progress in that atempts.

Good luck and thanks for the information

Joakim

Just so everyone knows, I am giving that red ventricosum away this fall to Ron.

I will post a photo of it taken in 2005 which really shows it off. As you know I cringe when I see it!

P.

Just so everyone knows, I am giving that red ventricosum away this fall to Ron.

I will post a photo of it taken in 2005 which really shows it off. As you know I cringe when I see it!

P.

Good show Paul! That's pretty funny about your reaction to it, but it is hard to account for taste. Personally, I think it is an amazing flower, but I do agree with most of your assessments regarding the deeply veined calceolus type X macranthos type hybrids. Many are pretty ugly!

Look out world, Ron Burch is going to make the most amazing fire engine red Cyp hybrid out there with this plant! What will he call it? Big Red? Red Rooster? Really Really Red? Rhonda Redhead? :laugh:

Tom

Here is the photo. I just don't care for it!


http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/entrectr/images/ventricosum.jpg

:eek:

I like it! Good thing I can't grow cyps....:poke:

I like it also and I love the colors on that one!

I like it also and I love the colors on that one!

Send it to Peter! :poke: :poke:

Pretty cyp...looks good to me.

Here is the photo. I just don't care for it!


http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/entrectr/images/ventricosum.jpg

:eek:

It's quite different from your others, but such a deep color and interesting pouch!

Send it to Peter! :poke: :poke:

I would love to grow Cyps someday but I'm just concentrating on my Paphs and Phrags for now.:D

Here I see that it has quite a lot of Yellow in this aswell. I thought it would be even more red.
The advantage is that the yellow are evenly distributed.
This might be very good with a red macranthos but I am not sure one gets rid of the yellow.
You will have to work a bit to get the firetruck red Ron.
But it will be interesting to see the results. There might be versions that have the yellow almost not showing just making the bluish red from macranthos to yellowish red in the hybrid.

I agree that the red-yellow hybrids are a mixed blessing, some looks good and others less good. But taste is different so there is for sure someone that love them all.

Kind regards Joakim