Jean Marie in Hybridizing – Murcott Garden

(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 (a diploid) chromosomes which is the usual case. But what is most interesting is that Jean Marie when crossed with three different yakushimanum seedlings by thre different hybridizers produced triploids: “Solidarity” by Hank Shannon (with yak as the seed parent) “Anita Gehnrich” (with Jean Marie as the seed parent) by Phil Waldman and an unregistered hybrid by Ray Kruse (with yak as the seed parent) that I have. I have no idea how many seedlings of each cross were grown so I don’t know what percentage of the seed was polyploid, but it just occurred to me that maybe, somehow, yakushimanum has a propensity to create triploids with Jean Marie. So in 2015 I repeated that cross using a very dwarf yak and a fast growing one and I also did the reverse cross, 6 crosses in total.

The result of the 6 crosss are a total of 20 plants, none of which have yet bloomed. Three of them seem to have polyploid foliage but thwey are still young. (written 4/2017)

But if there is a tendency for yak to create polyploids with Jean Marie, I wonder if that tendency carries into its progeny, for example Tiana.

I have a plant of yak x Anna that never sets seed, but this year I am going to put Jean Marie pollen on it. Lem stated that Anna wasn’t receptive to pollen until 3 weeks after the corolla dropped, so I’ll keep putting pollen on it well after the corolla drops. Anna has been the parent of many fabulous West Coast hybrids, so, if I can get a budded plant of Norman Gill, I am going to try to remake the Anna cross and see if I can get an East Coast hardy form of it that can be easily hybridized. (Norman Gill doesn’t give pollen.)

Over the years I have made many Jean Marie crosses, some of which have turned out very good, including at least one that I think is a polyploid and I would encourage you make as many Jean Marie crosses as you can.

Following written 10/2/13. GeorgeWoodard has a plant of Peter Faulk x Red Crown which is a great red, probably his best red. I put Jean Marie pollen on it several years ago and have about 15 seedlings with very red flowers, one of which seems to be a polyploidy (TT225). Most of the seedlings have very red flower buds.

Written 65/2/22: About 5 years ago I made two JM crosses: JM x fortuneii Target Rock clone and the reverse cross. Using JM as the seed parent made an enormous difference. All the seedlings have Very large pink trusses, about 10 inches in diameter, on very sturdy plants, all about 40 inches high. The reverse cross, using the fortunii as the seed parent was completely different, same color flowers but much smaller on rather lack-luster plants only 28 inches high. Is there a reason why using JM as the seed parent gives such a remarkedly different plant? I have read that some on the West Coast feel it is very difficult to get seed from a cross where JM is the seed parent. Here in the East my JM produces vertually no open pollenated seed except, I did get three seeds to grow two years ago. These plants look good now.