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2012 Rhododendron Crosses

  Click here to download file: 2012-Rhodo-Crosses-With-Qty. (11/10/12)  I know it is a little presumptuous of me to list my 2012 crosses as I have just finished cleaning the seed and have not even planted them yet but it does give you a little idea of my thinking. I made 68 crosses and only 22 produced seed. Some seed lots have only 1 or 2 seeds, others have hundreds. Yellow crosses usually produce large quantities of seed whereas red crosses are very sparse seed producers. I am sure that I will be able to send some seed to the exchange.…

Jean Marie in Hybridizing

(Written March, 2012 and placed on the Rhodo Chat room) For a long time now I have been interested in using Jean Marie in hybridizing East Coast plants.  Jean Marie has been the parent of many special West Coast hybrids: Taurus, Grace Seabrook, Halfdan Lem and many others.  Many of them turned out to be polyploids.  John Perkins has said that it seems that Jean Marie produces an inordinate amount of unreduced gamets, having twice the chromosomes as usual and thus when these unreduced gamets fuse with a normal gamet you get a seedling with 3n (a triploid) rather than 2n…

Rooting Hormone

An old, dear friend of mine, Sid Burns, taught me how to make my own rhododendron rooting hormone.  I normally use a 2% IBA hormone and these instructions are for that concentration.  On some cultivars I use 1% and on others 4%.  These two can be made by altering the amounts of the ingredients.  I might add that this 2% hormone works for many woody plants: Ilex (holly, English, American and Japanese), junipers, Canadian hemlock, most dwarf conifers and many other plants that don’t come to mind right now. 2% IBA rooting hormone: 5 grams indolebutyric acid  (IBA) 1 ½…

Ornamentality

ORNAMENTALITY  (Originally published in the ARS NY Chapter Newsletter around 1990.  It is somewhat dated.) Ornamentality is what we are looking for, or at least should be looking for as rhododendron hybridizers. Not just new rhododendrons, ones that are tough, somewhat compact growing, and bloom unfailingly year after year but especially highly ornamental – those that are beautiful when they bloom and when they don’t bloom. Where are we going to find these new plants? To get a clue, why not look at what other successful hybridizers have done. Far and away the most successful Eastern hybridizer was Charles Dexter.…

Ironclad Rhododendrons

The Ironclad Rhododendrons Lest we forget—the Past is Prelude RICHARD MURCOTT the New York Chapter Published in the NY Chapter newsletter about 1990. Updated 3/2018. We now hear very little about a group of hybrid rhododendrons that, when I started collecting and growing this genus in 1962, were the mainstay of the plants available. The Dexter Hybrids were very sparingly available, really just sold as a favor to the purchaser. There were other cultivars available, but the basic selection of rhododendrons available in garden centers were the Ironclads. To understand where they came from and how they were designated, a…

Rhododendrons In The 21st Century

(As published in the ARS Journal, Winter, 2011) Now that we are ending the first decade of the 21st century, I thought it might be useful to step back a little and try to look at rhododendrons and how they fit into current society.  In 2012 I will celebrate (?) my 50th year anniversary of joining the ARS and growing rhododendrons, so I thought it would be useful personally for me too. We should start by looking to see how things have changed in society over these last 50 or so years.  There have been remarkable changes in the way…

Answering the Four Most Asked Questions About Rhodendrons. (An outline of my standard talk to garden clubs)

Answering the Four Most Asked Questions About Rhododendrons.   Sitting at information booths at flower shows. 1- Why did my rhododendron die? 2- Should I fertilize my rhododendrons? 3- How do I prune my rhododendrons? 4- Why do my rhododendrons bloom every other year and some never bloom at all? –Why did my rhododendron die? I–Rhododendrons die because we kill the through lack of knowledge of their specific requirements. 1.  Death causes can always be found in the roots. A.  No adventurous or tap roots B. Extensive mass of fine roots invade a relatively small volume of soil C. A…

Some thoughts on ‘Whitestone’

Further regarding Whitestone:  I have attached five pictures:  Whitestone itself (in case you are not familiar with it), Whitestone open pollinated, Whitestone x (Dumper Yellow x Phipps 32), Whitestone x yakushimanum (not my cross) and Whitestone x Dexter’s Spice.  Note the mauve color of Whitestone x Dexter’s Spice.  I am assuming that the mauve color is coming from Whitestone as Dexter didn’t use catawbiense in his hybridizing.  Of course, he could have used a hybrid that had it in its background.

Paul Vossburg and the early history of rhododendrons on L.I.

Dick Murcott Speaks On Paul Vossburg A transcript from a talk given by Dick at Planting Fields in 1980. (Please realize that this talk was given 37 yeas ago and as all transcripts of talks are, the syntax is not as good as it would have been if it was a written piece.  I do not speak from notes which is another reason it might seem disjointed. (1/10/17)). Chapter 1 THE BEGINNING.      Paul was born in 1896 in Pennsylvania, and when he was young, his parents moved to a farming community on Long Island, an agricultural community named Westbury. This…

Polyploid Hybridizing

I have noticed in the past that many rhododendron enthusiasts have heard the words “polyploid”, “triploid” and “tetraploid” but are not really sure what the words mean and how the plants with this dscription came about.  So here is an unscientific description that I hope will help you understand the words. Rhododendrons have 26 chromosomes.  These are found in the nucleus of every cell in the plant.  Housed on these chromosomes are the genes.  These genes control everything about the plant: flower color, size and shape, leaf shape and when they are to be produced, etc., everything about the plant.…