Folks, If you're not interested in hybrids, close your eyes and move on to the next message. I've just posted this year's results from my Moraea breeding experiments. There were several interesting new flowers this year. Background: For several years, I've been experimenting with cross-breeding the very colorful "Peacock" Moraeas, as well as other species in the Moraea subgenus Vieusseuxia. I have about 15 species from that subgenus, all of which seem to be willing to interbreed. I grow hybrids in addition to the species themselves. Since many Moraea species are becoming rare, I think it's our responsibility to take good care of the species. But I like playing with the hybrids because I get something new to look at every year. I'm documenting my experiments online in the hope that people may find them interesting. I'd also welcome advice from more experienced growers; I am an amateur and need all the help I can get. The PBS has kindly allowed me to post my results to the wiki. I think this is a good idea for any hybridizer, even an amateur like me. Usually the records of plant breeders are lost when they die, forcing future growers to start over from scratch. Information placed on the wiki is backed up to the Internet Archive, and so is likely to last a lot longer than any of us. If you too are breeding bulbs and want to share your records on the wiki, I'd be glad to help you set that up. Okay, enough background. The highlights from this year are: --A plum-colored flower with an orange and black center. (MM 10-03d) --A couple of flowers that look a lot like Moraea gigandra but with a pale orange center. (MM 11-61a, MM 11-101a) --A mahogany-colored flower that's the closest thing I've gotten yet to a truly red Moraea. (MM 11-161b) --A mustard-colored flower with a bright green eye and intricate feathered colors on the tepals (this one's in the ugly but interesting category). (MM 10-02b) --A flower with purple stripes reminiscent of Moraea "Zoe," but with very different parents. (MM 11-69a) A photo index to all my hybrids is posted here: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… The photo index is a new wiki feature implemented by the fantastic David Pilling. It's a big table of thumbnail pictures. If you hover your mouse over a photo, you'll see some information about it. If you click on the photo, you'll go to a page with details on that cross, and more photos of it. If you hold down shift and click, you'll see an enlarged version of the photo. I think this is a nifty way to help people navigate a large number of hybrids. You get a visual overview on one page and the ability to dive deep on the ones you find interesting. There's also a page with details on my breeding program, including the list of species I'm still trying to obtain (hint, hint): http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… gram I should let you know about one other experiment we're doing with these pages. For a long time, those of us on the wiki team have been talking about adding to it the ability for people to post comments. Some folks are strongly in favor of that; others are deeply worried that we'll be buried in spam or that we'll siphon people away from this mail list. But we have been just arguing opinion, without any hard data. So I volunteered to be an experimental subject. We've added a comments form to the Moraea hybrid pages only. My goal in documenting the hybrids is to recruit more Moraea-growers, including people from outside the Society. I hope the comments will help to do that, gradually drawing non-members into interacting with the Society and eventually becoming members. It's not a replacement or competitor to this mailing list; all it does is make it easier for anyone to post a comment or ask a question about the hybrids. At least that's the idea; we'll see what happens. I'll take responsibility for reviewing and deleting any spam comments. I'd appreciate any feedback or advice you have regarding the hybrids themselves, or these new wiki pages. Thanks, Mike San Jose, CA (zone 9, min temp 20F / -6C) PS: You may now resume your regular discussion of bulb species.