Hyacinthus orientalis development

Diane Whitehead voltaire@islandnet.com
Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:21:58 PDT
This information is from The Development of Garden Flowers by Richard  
Gorer, 1970.

- a product of Turkish gardening
- originally only 4 colour forms, a pink, a blue, and a single and  
double white
- by 1725, 2000 named cultivars listed
- modern forms very much larger than the wild type and appear to have  
collected many extra chromosomes
- wild form 2n=16, but cultivated plants have from 19 to 30.
- first triploid reported in 1870
- if this is true, then earlier cvs must have exhibited simple gigantism
- flower development seems due entirely to selection and crossing  
selected forms, almost entirely by Dutch
- at one time the doubles which had two or sometimes three corollas,  
were most popular, but waned in popularity and most are now lost.

Diane Whitehead





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