Moving a Lord Balimore

I have a large Lord Baltimore (3 yrs old) that must be moved. I pruned it back about 1/2 way about a month ago, but the leaves are still green. Do I have to wait until it is completely dormant to be safe?
thanks,
Judy

I have moved Hardy Hibiscus in all stages of growth and they have always thrived...In fact, I just moved two yesterday.

Hmmmm, I'm zone 6, some even say we are zone 5. I wonder if your warmer zone 8 makes a difference. Thanks.

Judy I'm just not sure about that. I wouldn't think it would.

One word of caution about Lord Baltimore; a lot of its ancestry is Hibiscus coccineus (AKA Texas Red Star), so while it is hardy it may not behave the same way as other hardy Hibiscus with more Hibiscus moscheutos ancestry. If you move the plant as one big clump you should be OK. If you want to do root divisions, I would usually recommend waiting until the spring or provide the transplants with a lot of protection for the first winter in their new home.

I plan to do a post on pod infertility in Lord Baltimore in the near future. In the plant patent for Lady Baltimore it is documented that Lord Baltimore will only set seeds in 1 out of every 250 pods.

For those who have a real Lord Baltimore (Note: is should have a marijuana like leaf) how many seed pods do you see during the growing season? Until this year my answer would have been ZERO.

Mike

Hi,
I just read your post and mine would bloom for perfectly, but no seed pods yet :( I have had it for 6 yrs. at least.
Thank You for the information :)
Tootsie

Hi ALL: My Lord Baltimore had plenty of pods this year & as long as I can remember it has been producing plenty of pods. I do have extra pods this year & would love to get some Lady Baltimore seeds in exchange for the LB. He needs a mate. Jake

Okyo,

If your Hibiscus is a prolific seed produce, the probability is very high that you don’t have a Lord Baltimore as a true Lord Baltimore is “almost” completly pod sterile except under some very special conditions. Unfortunately all too many of the pictures of Lord Baltimore on DG are not of that Hibiscus. Lady Baltimore is a prolific seed producer but the seedling are not doing to be at all like the parent and in most cases are a big disappoint when they flower. If you want a real Lord Baltimore or Lady Baltimore you need to take cuttings or root divisions for know plants or purchase stock from a reputable grower.

Read the 1977 Plant Patent for Lady Baltimore (PP4271) for which Lord Baltimore is the pod parent:
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=KPY8AAAAEBAJ&dq=patent:PP4271

“The hybridization was conducted over a period of years using as seed parent "Lord Baltimore," which first bloomed in 1955. "Lord Baltimore" is itself a near sterile hybrid, its ancestry including Hibiscus militaris, Hibiscus coccineus, Hibiscus moscheutos, and Hibiscus palustris. Because of the shy seeding habit of "Lord Baltimore" (a flower-to-seedpod ratio of approximately 250 to 1), no attempt was made to keep the crosses exclusive. As far as possible, pollen was manually delivered from selected pink-flowered hibiscus plants; but there was no exclusion of the serendipitous bee. Selections were continuously made from the seedlings so derived.”

Where did you acquire your Lord Baltimore? Do you have any pictures which you can post online?

Mike

Hi Mike: I purchesed my Lord Baltimore about 8 to 10 years ago from a well known nursery in my area. This plant has been seeded in a adjoining garden about 15 feet away & has been comming back every year & has had plenty of flowers on each one. I have also seeded close by the original plant & they are very small the past 2 years. My original plant growns approximately 5'-6" to 7'-0" high & some times is very stragley, but still flowers. All the pictures I have seen surley looks like the Lord Baltimore. I guess I have a freak of some kind. Jake from Manassas Virginia.

Jack,

Can you post a picture of you Hibiscus which shows the leaves in detail? Unless the leaves look like Marijuana leaves your Hibiscus is not Lord Baltimore. I am not allowed to grow Hibiscus Lord Baltimore or Hibiscus coccineus (one of the parent species) in the front yard for that reason.

Last summer I had the experienced of purchasing a named specimen of patented Hibiscus from what I believed was reputable seller. After two months it was very apparent to me that the plant I ordered was not the one I received because I had a specimen of the same plant from another seller. I was able to identify the suspect Hibiscus as another Hibiscus which the first seller had but he denied that there had been a mix-up, which may have occurred with the grower. To bad, I did like that seller!

Based on my work this summer, which I have yet to post, if you are growing Hibiscus Moy Grande in close proximity to your suspected Hibiscus Lord Baltimore that could explain the seeds. Hibiscus Moy Grande will pollinate a Hibiscus Lord Baltimore with a 100% success rate and is the only Hibiscus I have found which will do that. Otherwise you are looking at a pollination rate of under 1 in 250 pods as the plant patent I referenced documents.

Mike

Mike: I can't send you a current picture of the Lord Baltimore due to the time of the year (it's not blooming). I can tell you that the leaves does look like the Marijuana plant & I do not have a Hibiscus Moy Grande plant. I am sending smurf428 (Windsor ON) some seed pods for her to try out. Only time will tell. Jake from Manassas Virginia.

Jack,

I had hoped that you might have some pictures from this past summer. Next summer please take some photographs and post them on DG. I would very much like to see what this Hibiscus looks like, particularly the leaves. A large fraction of the photographs in the DG Plant Files reporting to be Hibiscus Lord Baltimore, are not of that Hibiscus. There is too much seed trading going on within DG, involving plants which don’t set seeds under normal conditions. If this continues unchecked, the real seedless plants will be driven out of the hobby. Remember that one of the advantages to seedless plants is that they put all of their energy into flower production and not growing seeds. Once I found the trick to getting Hibiscus Lord Baltimore to set seeds, flower production was off.

While researching pod sterility in Hibiscus Lord Baltimore, this weekend, I found one post that pollen from Hibiscus coccineus, a Hibiscus Lord Baltimore parent species, will result in seed production. Here is the post:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hibisc/msg0220513523429.html

There was one very interesting comment in this post by “palmfan”:

”There are a number of sterile, or supposedly sterile Hibiscus varieties. Lord Baltimore is NOT completely sterile. It will cross with some other Hibiscus, such as Hibiscus coccineus which is one of Lord Baltimore's parents. I made such a cross, and ended up with an extremely vigorous, free-blooming hybrid with more attractive foliage than Lord Baltimore. A drawback it has is that it needs a LOT of room to spread out.”

For reasons I will go into in more detail in a full report, I very much believe the above post; the problem is the pollen from Hibiscus Lord Baltimore or any other Hibiscus moscheutos, is that the pollen-tubes are not long enough to do the job! As the Internet SPAM messages say “Size Matters”! I am going to have to try the Hibiscus coccineus backcross next summer. If a vigorous seed producing offspring of Lord Baltimore exists it should be identified to the hobby as there could be a real danger of loosing another historic cultivar. It looks like the same GW member “palmfan” is also a member of DG, I will reach out to them as this information is extremely interesting to me.

Mike

Mike weather or not its a lord i love hibs and would grow all and any in my yard, weather they are named or not...
I can post pics in the summer of my seedlings to show you what they look like.. I know it wont be a true lord since it will be grown from seeds but its still a hib lol..

I have a jazzberry jam that seeded only 2 pods this year, i though they were sterile, are they the same as lords only some hibiscus will pollinate them?? or is it just rare to get seeds..This plant flowered way more then my other hibs (being that those other ones all flowers pretty much went to seed)

jen

Jen,

I researched Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam and found that a plant patent as not been issued or applied for. The breeder has the PPAF tag on the websites offering the plant for sale but this tag may not be factual. Plant patents sometimes have information about the breeding history of the plant. Without that background information on Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam I would not want to speculate on the Hibiscus. If these two pods were the first you had on Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam after several years there is the possibility that these two pods were the result of a random pollination from another Hibiscus.

My best suggestion is to keep records for a few years and try pollinating with different Hibiscus and using the pollen from Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam on Hibiscus which are know pod producers. I like Hibiscus Blue River II to test pollen because if there is any self pollination the seedling will produce white flowers. Also, BR2 blooms early and the pods mature quickly so you should have answers within a few weeks. If Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam is pod sterile on its own pollen, by testing your other Hibiscus pollen you should get that answer in a few weeks as well.

I am not opposed to seed trading, as I do it myself; I am opposed to trading seed from named cultivars with the expectation replicating the named cultivar. I am even more opposed to trading seeds from plants which are know to be self pod sterile. I will talk to one of the DG Admins about flagging (1) seed sterility and (2) self seed sterility in the DG Plant Files.

Mike

Mike, this was the first year i had the jazzberry. I tried to pollanate a few with its own pollen none took.. Being that i was 8 months prego and had a baby(c-section) Aug 1st, gardening sadly had to take a back burner this year.. I only seen the pods cause i was cutting down my castor beans.. We cut them down early cause we have dogs and dont need them getting the seeds. They were at the back of the plant so i know that i didn't do those, heck i could hardly bend over to cut the castors down.. I dont have a blue river to try this with, and the only one close to the jazzberry was the swamp hibiscus.. I figured it was sterile since i tried about 10 hib flowers and none turned to pods.. Only tried this after about 20 or so flowers didn't pollinate on there own... Usually i see a flower and a day or two later theres a huge pod..

I doubt they'd say PPAF on their website if they hadn't applied for a patent. With regular (non-plant) patents there's a delay between when the person/company files the application and when it becomes publicly available/viewable so I suspect that may be the case for plant patents as well. So they may have filed it but the application isn't publicly accessible yet.

Ecrane3,

The website http://www.freepatentsonline.com/ allows you to search for both approved and pending plant patents which have been published. I was unable to find anything for Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam but did find the pending patent for Hibiscus mutabilis “Alma’s Star” which also has a pending plant patent.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090183289.pdf

The filing date was October 11, 2007 and the publication of the application was July 16, 2009 so there was a 21 month delay between the filling of the plant patent and its publication. Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam could fall into that window. In my post I should have said “a plant patent as not been issued or application publisher”. How long has Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam been in the trade?

The only “available” pending plant patent from Walters Gardens, Inc. is a Hosta plant named 'Blue Ivory' which was filed on March 12, 2007 and published on September 18, 2008, with no patent issued as of this post. Apparently there is quite a backlog in the Patent Office which has not improved with time.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20080229460.pdf

There are currently 28 published applications containing the word “Hibiscus” in the title, 22 of which deal with Hibiscus plants.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/result.html?p=1&edit_alert=&srch=xprtsrch&query_txt=TTL%2FHibiscus&usapp=on&date_range=all&stemming=on&sort=relevance&search=Search

I will recheck in the spring to see if our AOL Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam can be found. I did run a date range search in Google and found documents going back to mid 2006 so I don’t understand why the application for Hibiscus Jazzberry Jam is missing from the database.

Mike

I knew there was quite a long delay for between filing a patent application and that application getting published for non-plant patents, so I figured there was a good chance the situation would be similar with plant patents. Getting the patent granted can also be a quite lengthy process!

The other thing to check when you're searching for patents is sometimes the name that a plant is sold under is a trademark name not the "true" cultivar name that shows up in the patent application (they might list the trademark name in the patent, but they wouldn't have to). So if Jazzberry Jam is a trademark rather than the true cultivar name then you'd need to find the real name in order to find the patent application. I don't know if Walters does this or not, but I've seen quite a few cases where growers give their plants fun easy to remember trademark names but the actual cultivar name is much less memorable (that way when the plant comes off patent years from now and anyone can propagate it and sell it, the original grower will still own the name that gardeners are familiar with and everyone else will be forced to sell it using the real cultivar name that almost nobody knows).