Gladiolus cultivar group help needed

Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com
Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:50:55 PDT
If someone out there is an expert on the classification of gladiolus
cultivars, please chime in and help me out.

 

I’m growing a beautiful hybrid glad called ‘Halley” or ‘Nanus Halley’. Other
than being a glad, it has little in common with the other “nanus” hybrids I
know. 

 

What it suggests to me is what in the old days were known as “primulinus
hybrids”, a group characterized by soft pastel colors including pale yellows
and oranges. This group had another characteristic: the uppermost tepal
tended to droop down a bit, as if to protect the stamens and stigma from
rain. My ‘Halley’ also shows this characteristic. And it’s like the old
primulinus hybrids in another respect: the tall (thirty inch) scapes are
gracefully flexuous and have widely spaced individual flowers. 

 

Placing this in the Nanus group makes no sense to me. 

 

One final comment to help keep prospective replies to this post on track:
the plant once called Galdiolus primulinus is now called Gladiolus dalenii.
However, the hybrid group once known as “primulinus hybrids” was subsumed
into the general run of gladiolus hybrids long before the name change from
primulinus to dalenii was effected and widely recognized. So, although I
would not to hesitate to call a modern hybrid of Gladiolus dalenii a dalenii
hybrid, I prefer to use the term “primulinus hybrid” for references to the
old, original hybrids of this group, if only because that was the name in
use when these hybrids were being actively developed , and that is the name
which will be found in the older literature.    

 

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/

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