Justin, as with Hannon this is hardly my field of expertise, but I do know a thing or two about this topic. If you are thinking about breeding plants yourself, there is one big mistake you can avoid. There are two big groups of flower pigments, the anthocyanins and the anthoxanthins. As the names suggest, the anthocyanins are responsible for purples, magentas, blues, and blue-reds. The anthoxanthins are responsible, as the name suggests, for yellows and the reds and oranges with a strong yellow component. Many genera have species in which one or the other type of pigment prevails. When you cross a species with predominately anthocyanin based color with a species with anthoxanthin based color, you get mud in the first generation. Well not mud, but you get clouded, smudgy, smoky, muted colors which generally lack brilliance. If you would like to see some of these colors, try to find old (pre WWII) cultivars of bearded iris or asiatic hybrid lilies from the 1950s and early 1960s. The modern crocus hybrid ‘Advance’ provides another example. As Hannon hinted, you’ll discover that this is a vast topic. Use wikipedia as a start. By the way, I don’t really carry around details like this in my head; I just happened to be reading the wikipedia account of anthocyanins the other day in connection to another topic. Another thing you’ll discover there is the way pH influences color: change the pH in which the pigments float and you get sometimes big color changes. Back in the old days people used to ad baking soda to the water in which cabbage and other vegetables were cooked: it tended to intensify the green color. I think I’ve read that red cabbage cooked with baking soda turns startling and un-appetizing blue (but check that one out). . There is a fascinating world of stuff to know about this. Good luck and have fun with it. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/