Glaucus Satsuki Azalea farm

Glaucus

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Here some pictures of my satsuki production line.
Most of these are hybrid seedlings. Some are cuttings of named cultivar.

Seedlings in the test grow:
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These ones grow very well in full sun and quite organic-material poor sandy soil.
I expect solid purple flowers on these.


A whole bunch more with smaller leaves and more bushy plant habit:
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I have hundreds of these.

Additionaly, I have hundreds of potted seedlings:
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Why do I have so many? I am looking for a seedling with unusual or improved flowers that I can register as a new named cultivar.
The other ones with normal 'boring' flowers, I need to get rid off to make space for new seedlings.
I can already see that many of these azaleas are perfectly fine plants.
Easiest way for me to get rid of them is by composting them. However, I am also considering now to sell some of them.
These seedlings are not trained as bonsai. And neither have they been giving the pruning treatment to make a perfect spherical dense shrub for landscaping.
I don't prune them to be able to most quickly see their flowers and make a selection.

Additionally, I do have cuttings of named cultivars that I am growing into whips, to be trained as bonsai. I also can't keep all of these.
I hope to be able to offer some that really have additional value because of bonsai training in a few years.
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(Don't mind the slug-ravaged chili plants in the top left. Slugs seem to leave the satsuki completely alone.)

Furthermore, in a few years I hope to be able to offer rare new Japanese satsuki cultivars as well.

I guess I need to figure out if there is actual additional demand in the EU zone. Then possibly build my own webshop. Or find someone who already has one and wants to take a whole bunch off me and sell them. Possibly sell them locally is also an option. And if there is no demand, produce less new cuttings.

Additionally, this thread can be a place for some more azalea educational stuff. I am usually too busy to take pictures of 'mundane' tasks like repotting.
I can maybe share more of what I am doing, but not sure what level of interest there is. Usually, it is not bonsai-specific.
 

AnutterBonsai

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that's awesome! I wish you a great success in your endeavors
 

Deep Sea Diver

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Well done Mark!

We are looking forward to future posts!

Cheers
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Glaucus

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Amphibious friends.

Not exactly sure why, but frogs seem to want to sit among my azalea pots, for some reason. Maybe because I water them and they were therefore a wet place in a very dry summer.
Sometimes, they crawl all the way in between the pots. Sometimes they sit partially on the azalea:
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Additionally, salamanders hide in great numbers underneath the trays and crates. Sometimes, under a single tray there may be 4 salamanders.
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If I were to lift all crates and trays right now and collect all salamanders, they may amount to up to 30 or 40. I believe they are all juveniles and I assume that during the night, they go crawl around and look for food.

Additionally, I also have a cutting that is flowering (because it was rooted last year and grew indoors):
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This is one of my own seedlings and has superior foliage, I would say. It turns out this cutting already has the white centers. The original plant took about 10 years before it showed the white centers. And now half the flowers have it.
I am strongly thinking about registering this one. Possible name, maybe 'Velvet Eye'.

I have also started to harvest this year's seeds and showed the first tray: 'Aika' x 'Hekisui'.
 
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Deep Sea Diver

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Funny you posted the frog photos. A couple weeks ago we noticed random frog calls in our backyard. Never had these before. Yesterday when we relocated the trays of whips, out poked the head of a friendly tree frog in one of the trays.

Really nice flowers Mark. I like the raspberry colored pistils. Well done!

cheers
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Carol 83

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Amphibious friends.

Not exactly sure why, but frogs seem to want to sit among my azalea pots, for some reason. Maybe because I water them and they were therefore a wet place in a very dry summer.
Sometimes, they crawl all the way in between the pots. Sometimes they sit partially on the azalea:
View attachment 455065
View attachment 455066

Additionally, salamanders hide in great numbers underneath the trays and crates. Sometimes, under a single tray there may be 4 salamanders.
View attachment 455067
View attachment 455068

If I were to lift all crates and trays right now and collect all salamanders, they may amount to up to 30 or 40. I believe they are all juveniles and I assume that during the night, they go crawl around and look for food.

Additionally, I also have a cutting that is flowering (because it was rooted last year and grew indoors):
View attachment 455074

This is one of my own seedlings and has superior foliage, I would say. It turns out this cutting already has the white centers. The original plant took about 10 years before it showed the white centers. And now half the flowers have it.
I am strongly thinking about registering this one. Possible name, maybe 'Velvet Eye'.

I have also started to harvest this year's seeds and showed the first tray: 'Aika' x 'Hekisui'.
Beautiful flower.
 

Glaucus

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So this summer had very little rain and a lot of sunlight hours. I think it was a record in terms of sun hours. And the drought was pretty bad. We are supposed to get about 50 to 60mm of rain each month. But I think July had 10mm and august 2mm. And even all the months before that there was already a 100mm deficit.
I transplanted seedlings from last year into a growing field, which has pretty humus-poor soil. The first I show here were planted before winter. Some others were transplanted there in the middle of summer, always during more overcast days.
They were watered about 1 to even 3 times a day.

There is almost no shade for the growing field. During the hottest days, I did provide some shade cloth temporarily, because it was really too hot and dry and these were fresh transplants.
Only a section has permanent shade because of sunflowers planted there. This resulted into a symptom I rarely see in potted azalea.
It is a form of chlorosis, where the leaves lose colour. I think the leaves go yellow when the flowers are white, orangy when the flowers are coloured.
My hypothesis is that this symptom comes from either 1) too much sun 2) chronic heat or drought stress.
You can see that some have it bad, some intermediate, and some very little or nothing.

Here some pictures:

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You see here that two plants side by side are very different in the severity of these symptoms:

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A different cross didn't show these symptoms for a long time, but at the end of the summer some started to show a slightly similar symptom. Likely, they don't go yellow because all of these have brightly coloured flowers. So the leaves grow orangy.

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Note that you don't really see the chlorosis veins indicative of nitrogen deficiency.

The same cross as this last picture, but the area shaded by the sunflowers:
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No symptoms there. Note the soil also strayed moist there for a longer period of time, because of the shade.

So this is a clear symptom one can get with too much sun exposure during summer. I am not sure though if this is about sun intensity, the temperature of the plant and soil, or a chronic effect of drought.
Acute drought looks very different.

Also not sure if the diffence observed is because of genetic differences, or if the more healthy plants just had stronger root systems.
 

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Glaucus

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So it is basically the end of the growing season. None of the new seedlings seem to have flower buds. Their terminal ends are still growing with new leaves.
All mature azalea plants already had terminal flower buds since August.
Many seedlings have gained some autumn colours, which is a strong indication of flower colour.

All crosses I made between Hachmann kurume and satsuki are turning red, just like their hachmann kurume parents:


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Now these Hachmann kurume parents themselves turn completely purple, red or bronze. No difference between older and newer leaves. They are quite evergreen so they don't shed their leaves. And the evergreen leaves also gain the winter colour.
Many satsuki only change the colour of the larger spring leaves, which are deciduous. I believe these seedlings are a bit in-between. But of course they are also still immature, so their behavior right now may not be identical to their future mature form behavior.


The cross I made to try to obtain a flower with a very strong yellow blotch does seem to have these deciduous spring leaves:
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So this azalea will not have solid coloured flowers, which is to be expected and my goal. However, these flowers are a bit too orangy for an azalea with yellow flowers. Azaleas with white flowers have yellow autumn coliur on their decisioud spring leaves. Azaleas that are a very pale colour or have a strong colour non-yellow blotch usually have orangy leaves.
So this seems to indicate that this azalea does have an off-white flower colour with potentially a strong blotch effect.
Note that these leaves are dropping. Some azaleas gain a a winter colour on all their leaves. Others shred their leaves and only the shedded leaves gain a colour, just before they drop. Many azaleas do retain a green leaf colour throughout winter.


This seedling batch is [Alexander x Hekisu] X Kozan, and all these seedlings are very compact multibranched with very narrow leaves.
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On the top left, there are two that have yellow leaves. But most have red leaves. So some seem to have flowers like Kozan or Hekisu, while the red leaved ones are likely similar to Alexander and the [Alexander x Hekisui] cross.

Another interesting observation one can make from the autumn leaves is colour variegation. In the same way as red or purple streaks and spots may appear in white flowers, the leaves have the exact same patterns:
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This [Asahi no Izumi x unknown] X Hekisui seedling seems to have white flowers with a strong tendency for variegation to appear.
It is a common 'problem' for satsuki with white flowers where colour may appear to have too many white flowers without any variegation, even though the individual plant is a cultivar that ought to have a good potential for patterned flowers.
Similarly with seedlings, the first few years all flowers may be white. With patterned satsuki, there is a trade-off between having too many mostly white flowers, and flowers patterning too much so that eventually solid coloured flowers will start to dominate. This individual seedling seems to have a good balance between the two already.

Most of the seedlings high on satsuki blood are still quite green. Some can be completely evergreen, not even having leaves gain autumn colour, and none of them dropping. Many others still have to start shedding their spring leaves.

I am sowing some new seeds. And I am learning once more that the non-diploid azaleas Miharu & Yumemonotagari (Suisen sports), Suiho (Asuka sport), Saishun, Aika (Meguriai sport), Haru no Sono (Issho no haru sport) and Hilda Niblett indeed have poor germination rates. Seed pods usually fail to set. And even when used as a pollen parent, seeds from seed parents that usually germinate perfectly, germinate at an extremely reduced rate if they have these non-diploid azaleas as a parent.
Sometimes the seeds that do germinate take twice as long to do so. But right now, I have very little seeds germinating from crosses involving these.

I did find out that one of the best azaleas for producing a lot of seeds is Juko/Byakuren/Karenko; big fat pods with a lot of seeds.
And some good genetics as well.
 

Deep Sea Diver

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Looks like a really good crop despite the weather challenges this year. Its plain to see you accomplished an awful lot this year creating new azaleas!

Thanks for sharing these efforts. As always I’m learning a lot from your work.

cheers
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Glaucus

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Actually, I have some really nice impressive plants that I didn't picture. Also a tiny few that did get too dry and lost all leaves, but are trying to bud back.
I got some large ones that have like 2 or 3 shoots of 15cm, that all grew this year.
Additionally, a few that were in small pots and that kind of stagnated. Having a small plant in a small pot during a very dry summer is not so good.
Once a seedling takes off, it is a breeze to grow. The roots fill up the pot and water management is much easier.

Also, the seedlings cover the full range from small round leaves, large round leaves, small narrow leaves, to large narrow leaves.
It is actually not obvious from the pictures that I did post what kind of seedling stock I actually have. It's actually more impressive than you'd assume.
 

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I think these seedlings were all from last year's seeds:
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But also some uglies, this one did get too dry during the summer:
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And these are from 2020, but they never really took off. I blame the pot size. Maybe planted too early in too small a pot. It never filled out the quite small pot very well.
They are too wet when it is very rainy and too dry if it is summer without rain. Smaller seedlings do well when growing together in a tray, I found out. I suspect the same may be true for cuttings.
And then the moss starts growing at a rate faster than the azalea, which may also have an effect. Next spring, I just need to compost all the slow growing and stagnated seedlings.

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Glaucus

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I am sowing again a ton of seeds this year. One of the major crosses of this year is 'Kisshoten' x 'Hekisui'.

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'Kisshoten' ([Hakurei x Suisen] x Kirameki)

'Hekisui' (sport of 'Aozora' [Aikoku x Kozan])
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This tray where I sowed the seeds on sphagnum is a bit too dense for long-tern good growth. The plan is to keep them in this tray for a long time, maybe late spring or summer 2023.
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Small plants do well growing together in trays as opposed to very small individual pots. So I do some thinning out.

I can gently pull seedlings with intact root systems out of the sphagnum, by gradually and gently increasing the applied pulling force, obtaining these types of seedlings:
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You can see initially they grow mostly their roots. There is just a tiny first true leaf. But they grew a bunch of roots about 2x the length of the stem.

These I rebury in trays with 50/50 peat-based potting soil/perlite, covered by a thin layer of potting soil only. I space them about 2 to 3 cm apart:
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I expect about 4 to 6 of these trays, which should provide me with about 150 to 300 seedlings.
Might decide to plant most of them out in a test grow field rather than pots until first and second year of flowering to evaluate.


I expect some smallish flowers, like both parents and Kozan/Nikko/Hi no Maru, together with compact growth. Kisshoten can provide a white base, or a dark red colour, Hekisui some pale in-between jiai colours.
Both parents are pretty similar, so they should be really in the Kozan system spirit.
 
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Glaucus

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While it has been the 3rd warmest autumn every recorded, temperatures are near freezing recently. Some trees still have leaves.
However, about two weeks ago there was one single frosty night with -4C. One really wants to have some nights near 0C, then a few nights with -1C, and only then the more serious frost.

While many azaleas have had autumn colour and signs of dormancy since mid September, not all of them were able to handle the frost.

Some Suisen x Hanatsuzuri cross seedlings seem to have died:
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A mature Encore azalea in the full ground also has some severe symptoms:
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Sunniest summer on record, followed by 3rd warmest autumn on record, no autumn blooms, and now severe frost damage. And this one is said to be hardy in zone 6 in the US.
Maybe N=1, but I am not very impressed.

Basically nothing else has any signs of damage, including all the Japanese import rare satsuki whips.

In terms of autumn colour, this European kurume seems to perform best for me:
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'Little Red' the Wenken hybrid, not the 'Allotria' dwarf sport that is actually pink, but has the same name

Not much will happen outdoors for the coming months, until about mid April, depending on the weather.
 

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So for this year's indoor rooted cuttings, I am still struggling to find the optimal conditions. I have light, a tent, a humidifier, some air movement, heat mats. However, I still get suboptimal growth.
The thing that puzzles me a bit however, is that there is no universal trend.

The main thing I saw was leaves turning really red, which I believe is a sign of too much light:

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However, not all seedlings showed this behavior. Not sure if it is because one seedling is nearer to the hotspot center than the other, or if it is because it is not the same cultivar, or just random or something about the health status of the individual cutting.
It might be the cultivar has an effect as the leaf size is very different. Large leaf one is an Asuka sport named Suiho. The small leaf cutting is my own satsuki x R.nakaharae hybrid.

So since these red leaves appeared, I lowed the light intensity. I even set it as low so that only 4 or 3 of the LED strips would turn on, cutting down the light intensity to 50% or 75% of the lowest intensity setting.
However, then I saw green leaves that just fell off. I believe plants just randomly drop their leaves if there is not enough light. I figured that with a very long day length of about 14 or 16 hours, the low light would be fine.
You can see however that the reddish leaved cutting has new leaves that are perfectly green. So maybe I just went to too little light. I turned the light intensity back up again.

The seedlings I am growing do not seem to be affected by this light intensity issue. Only cuttings that are being rooted.

I also moved seedlings from last year indoors. These are all satsuki x European kurume seedlings that I sowed October 2021. A few of them already grew had a flower bud or two last autumn.
These were frozen solid with -8C night temps just before Christmas. When it thawed, I moved them indoors. After about 3 weeks, they show signs of new buds.
Because I suspect that several kurume traits will dominate, for example only solid coloured flowers, I plan to make another cross.
If you create a hybrid seedling by crossing two species, the F1 generation would be hybrids, but all very similar. This is because all the dominant traits will be expressed.
A second generation, called the F2 cross, is needed to create variation by bringing out the recessive traits.
The same thing is likely needed for these satsuki x kurume. Therefore, I won't do any selection on the F1 yet and try to create a new F2 cross as quickly as possible.
This is why I brought them indoors to make them bloom and produce the F2 seeds asap.

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A little bit surprisingly, they all seem to grow before they flower, like satsuki and unlike kurume. I believe that if these had been pure kurume hybrids, their flower buds would have started to swell and show colour and then bloom first, before any signs of new leaves.

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The new growth is perfectly green already while the older leaves are starting to become fully green again a bit more slowly, still showing some of their winter colour.

For these, it seems the flower bud has made very little progress towards flowering. So I believe they will behave like satsuki in that respect. Which suggests that growing first and blooming later like a satsuki is the dominant trait here.

This one is actually the most kurume-like, because it put several flower buds at the end of the apex. A satsuki usually will only develop 1 flower bud right at the end and center of each shoot, like in the previous picture.
Some of these kurume are much densely flowering and they put several flower buds all over. It also has the least new growth, so it might still flower before it puts out significant growth.

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Immedaitely, a few aphids showed up on the new growth. Nothing that could cause actual damage. But they are there immediately and quickly find the best spot to get food.
 

Glaucus

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First seedling flower opened!
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Msxe-21-02

This was a cross made back in spring 2021 by crossing 'Marashino' with 'Hekisui'.
'Marashino' is a 'Maruschka' sport, which is a very common garden azalea in Europe. Which means it is really hardy and robust and adapted to our European climate.
I would say a lot of the traits of this seedling are intermediate between satsuki and kurume.
And a big surprise is that this one has very large white centers. In fact, it is almost a white flower with a pink border.
The flower is much more neat than Marashino, but not quite like Hekisui.
The blotch is very pale and there is no signs that there will be stripes.
I believed all of these would be solid red or purple. So it is a bit of a puzzle why a seemingly recessive trait is coming to expression in this seedling.
Could it be that many European kurume are carriers of the white center recessive trait? Hekisui can have the white center flower pattern, of course.
So it seems this trait was inherited from the satsuki Hekisui, and in the case of this seedling, these genes overruled the solid colour genes of the European kurume.
Marashino is the seed parent, by the way. So the kurume heritage is a certainty.
The flower is also single, so no filled flower like Marashino. So filled flowers seem to be a recessive trait.

I can't say this plant is anything special on it's own. Though it may be the first European azalea x satsuki cross made to flower.
So very very unlikely this one ever gets named. For the record, this seedling is ID is Msxe-21-2 (which I will shorthand to Mse2 at some point (removing the year and the cross x).

My idea was to make a second cross as fast as possible, without applying any selection criteria, to obtain bicolour and variegated Japanese satsuki x European azalea hybrids.
But it seems this can already be achieved (to a limited degree) in one generation. I may end up crossbreeding this one with solid coloured one I like the most.
Might turn out to be the darkest shade or red. Or the most satsuki-like/neatest flower shape.
 
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Glaucus

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Some more seedling first flowers that have just opened. Note, these are just random flowers that one can expect from an average seedling.

The same cross as the pink with white centers of the previous post.
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Msxe-21-01, 'Maraschino' x 'Hekisui'
So a bit of a washed out salmon pink, but it looks like it also wants to do the white centers.


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KaxCe-21-01
Just a basic red flower from 'Kangiten' x 'Čertoryje', to the eyes the colour looks a bit better than on my PC screen. Just a basic clear red. No blue, but not super vivid or dark either.

And in terms of small flowers, this one is basically Kakuo- or thumb-sized:
1677446026113.png
Muxe-21-01, 'Muneira' x 'Hekisui', so it looks very similar to 'Muneira' the European kurume parent. It must be even smaller than 'Muneira', I would say.
I think the fact that this one has almost 3cm long new shoot kinda confirms that it is indeed much later flowering than 'Muneira', so that 'Hekisui' is indeed the pollen parent, and no contamination or Muneira self-pollination occurred.
I actually have a reverse cross 'Hekisui' x 'Muneira' that is about to flower as well. (Then there is the debate about chloroplast DNA, which is inherited usually from the seed/mother parent only, so which parent is the seed parent may actually make a difference. Like mitochondrial DNA in humans, inherited from mothers only. Though some of this DNA can also be inherited from the pollen parent).
The ratio leaf to flower here are kind of extreme. The leaves are not that small.

As expected, in general the trait of solid coloured flowers dominate, because of the Kurume azalea genes.

So far, I like Msxe-21-02 best. I'd prefer to make a new cross with 4 different parents.
Then, that should give me a good white flower. And maybe one with coloured variegation.
Eventually, I will learn what the odds are of getting a white flower with coloured variegation when one parent lacks that trait.

Many satsuki x satsuki crosses are outside, so these have to wait until at least mid May.
This indoor flowering works very well, however. So I am kinda tempted to bring something else indoors.
 
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Deep Sea Diver

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Well done @Glaucus !

Looking for the results of the satsuki x 2 crosses. I agree about the Msxe-21-01 flowers. I also really like the red of KaxCe-21-01 a lot. Especially if the red is even better than the photo. For me the next cut line has got to be the flower longevity and leaf shape/color/size/closeness and the over all habit. Been preferring small to medium size growth habit lately.

Of course, the overall attributes of strength, resistance to disease, flexibility and propensity to back bud are the backbone of any cross. There is a reason why 100’s of thousands of azalea crosses are created and only a few are chosen.

cheers
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