Merry Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas to you all! We will begin our tradition of celebrating the 12 days of Christmas starting tomorrow. In whatever way you celebrate this season, may you find moments of rest and happiness.

Blessings to you and yours,

Jim Sproul

Smooth Hulthemias

If you have experience with 'Tigris' (the common ancestor to all of my Hulthemia hybrids), you know that it is anything but smooth.  In fact, with it's rambling habit, it seems to actually reach out and grab onto you when you walk by it.  It's curved pickles make it especially difficult to disentangle yourself from it.  Although I have had a few Hulthemia seedlings along the way that have been quite smooth, most of them had smaller nearly indistinct blotches.  Though not always the case, the seedlings with the better blotches seem to have the more prickly stems.

In the photo below, is a seedling that I have liked for it's blotch size and unusual coloring.  The second photo shows it's characteristically prickly stem in greater detail.  Though it is fully remontant, it's habit is reminiscent of the earlier once blooming types, having canes ambling all over the place.

Because of the thorny connection to good blotches, I was very pleased this year to find the seedling show below.  Though it is closer to a mini in size, it has one of the largest and darkest blotches that I have seen to date.  And if you look closely, you will not see any thorns along it's stems or peduncles.  As an added bonus, it has very good blotch heat stability.  The last photo, taken in cooler weather to show the intensity of the blotch, is unfortunately not very clear since it was taken with my iPhone 3GS.