Is there hope yet for HG ???

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/brug/hpgal040930509749.html?2

NO,lol.

Where did you find that? I have 4 of them! No blooms to date!

It's on Garden Web. I wonder if thier zone has anything to do with it....zone 10b...almost in Cuba. LOL

You know I like to use honest words...here in gh are zone 10 or more..the bud (not bud´s) is gone.

Happy the person which will find out it all.

This is a person who I correspond with regularly. She is a good and reputable person who is absolutely thrilled to have HG bloom after 2 years. I saw this picture earlier this week. If any one of you have dealt with Natural Selections Exotics this is Enid, and she is just as thrilled to see a bloom on HG as the rest of us would.

edited to say she also knows it is reluctant to bloom but was just so excited to see a bloom she had to post it. Just like we all would.

This message was edited Saturday, Apr 26th 12:00 AM

I bet she was thrilled! What a fantastic bloom. I bet she will keep that plant around for a long while now LOL......... just in case it blooms again. What a delightful surprise for her. The plant itself sounds like it is so healthy and huge. Maybe that is the secret! Did she say if she had anymore buds Liz? I'd love to see more pictures.

Heck,if mine even got a bud I'd be calling the news station...LOL

Wow, maybe there is hope. Mine made buds last year, but a storm knocked them off.

Glory, We just had the 1st real rain down here in quite some time. My HG has Y'd after what seems like forever and is setting bud's. I'm fearful they are now gone, have'nt looked yet,heck I even try to not look at them that hard. I'm thinking that stressing about what to do ,what not to do has taken the fun out of this plant and from here on out no more extra care for HG ! Right now the plant is showing signs that it needs fed and that's because I've have'nt in fear the buds will drop. Well it's ending today! but will give it one more year .I hope to collect some pollen to give to people to work with : )
John

That's a lovely photo! I never realised HG dropped it's skirts so much! If anyone's dumping or pruning theirs, would you send a cutting or two over this direction! My cutting rotted :o( and I was so looking forward to the challange of getting it to bloom!

Bruno

That is too cool. Liz, did she save pollen or pollinate? And didn't you tell me she is fairly new to brugs? Wow!! I'm so happy for her and to know that this brug will bloom in the states.

okay, maybe I'll keep my last one. can't hurt, right?? lol

It will be wonderful if HG would bloom now and then *lol* I had put my hopes in that it just needed a warmer zone, but as the situation seem to be the same in z 10b heat was not the thing (alone) to trigger reasonable bloom. I found some of the factors that improve health, fast growth and blooming in B. sanguinea (seven different sp. or hybrids, so the factors must be general of this species), but I don`t know about this one? Its a hard nut to crack *lol* I hope that Cala will come up with an experiment revealing more about its requirements to bloom.

I'm hoping mine will do the same...keeping my fingers crossed.

When I said:no,lol. last night, I meant the rare blooming from HG,nothing else. Most of us are waiting for more flowers...most time the buds fell down before.

It seems to me that the HG must become elder..
Hendrik Jan and the botanical gardens of Hannover have elder plants ( uncutted )they have flowers each year.

I was just wondering. Both my Brugs and Dats loose even large buds, when there is a break in the watering and they dry out too much. The cells connecting the calyx to the Y seém to be a kind of "loosening-point" that make it easy for the plant to shredd everything currently not needed in order to survive. Now what make me curious is that Gommer and the botanical garden has their HG`s in bloom every year ... It occurs to my sleepy brain that these two places has probably at least one thing in common ... an automatic watering and fertilizing system ... could it be due to the fact that they have automatic water and fertilizing system installed that can water the plants the exact amount that they need on everyday basis? Just a curious thought :)

nothing common to Hendriks and Dr.Preissel.Sorry, wrong thought...I have seen both.

That sounds as if it could be the answer, Tonny. I had buds twice during the winter months, inside, furnace heat, blower, they dropped buds both times. I was only lightly watering them at that time.

The buds are no problem,hundrets here. The dropping is heavy,inside and outside.

Ludger, I think you misunderstood me :) I think that what you said before has half-ways solved the problem of, why HG looses all the buds and I want to thank you for the clue. I know it will have lots of buds, but I am trying to find out, why they suddenly all drop off agaín, before the flowers are open. Can you tell us about, how Gommer and Preissel water their HG`s? I think that you are right that older trees will have blooms and I think that there are a bit more to it also :)

Gloria, you could be right. You see, when I read up on the tjhread that HG didn`t bloom well in z 10b either the lack of heat could not be the only problem. As HG is a hybrid with heavy x candida and versicolor genes it would naturally fit into the category of Brugs from the warmer parts of SO-America, so I thought that maybe watering and fertilizer was the key to release a major bloom. I will run a search for weather in the areas where the versis grow naturally and look for patterns of rain, sun and temperatures and see what I come up with. Not that I think it would bring us closer to an answer, but rather something that could bring forth more associations and more angles into play.

Well I will rethink the watering and fertilizer. Otherwise, I have watched it isn't getting too hot in summer, nor to much sun, was treating it like I would a Sang. Maybe this summer, something I do, might work, sure hope so.

Tonny,
My Hg is now two or three years old...never been cut down...it goes from a pot in the gh to planting in the ground in spring. I am in zone 8b which gets very warm in the summer..like 95º and very humid. I will not give up on this brug...maybe if I keep telling myself that I will began to believe it. LOL All I want it to do is to bloom. :0(
I went and checked HG today and it looks great but no baby buds yet.

Liz,
Did Enid say if she does anything different with HG then she does with the rest of her Brugs?

I'll ask her all the above questions. She didn't go into a lot of detail, just sent me the pictures and said she had been so excited that she took tons of pics to celebrate.

Liz,
Enid should be proud...I think if mine ever bloomed I'd be one happer camper also. LOL

Mine is three years old also. Maybe............someday. I like a challenge!

Cool...the HG Challenge! I can't wait to see one of you get this one to bloom!

Liz, tell Enid she`s genius probably without knowing it *lol* She must have hit a factor or two making it keep the flower. Wish she knew what? :)

Glory, okay we got some of the speculations eliminated *lol* The old tree, the not-been-cut, heat and high humidity. This mean that the circle of factors is narrowing in *lol* What about scare tactics? Ida of Sorø threw out 20 stems when it thought its time had come *lol* It normally only throw out onew or two. Works to get apples in early bloom as well for other fruit trees and bushes. Some get halfways ring barked. If the survival of the individual is threathned it will perform the impossible to survive througg the kids *lol* Survival of the species *lol* Not Darwins invention Nature discovered it long before him *lol* Keep up the good work with this one. Never give up.

Tonny,
May I'll have good talk with HG and tell him how it is" bloom or your dead" LOL

Tonny, you might have something there... the 'purpose' of a plant is to reproduce itself, so perhaps if it is 'stressed' it may decide to bloom, thereby producing seed. Perhaps too much affection has been lavished on HG... Time for some 'tough love'...

As a sidenote, the original cross of Pardanthopsis x Belamcanda, which produced my favorite bigeneric hybrid, X Pardancanda, was successful after 9 or 10 years of attempts, and then only because the Pardanthopsis pod parent was so stressed that it produced seed, then died.

Tonny, we use a chemical in the GH to keep Christmas cacti from losing their buds, wonder if some sprayed on HG when its budded would keep them from falling?
I had buds on mine last summer, then we had a storm and a tree limb fell on HG and broke it. It's made buds twice, but both times the weather changed drastically and the buds fell. I will do some experiments on it this summer if I get a chance. I have three big plants, so I could put them in different exposures.

Cala,
Whats the name of the chemical that y'all use?

You are so funny Cala! We have to come up for a new name for you!

I must confess I had blooms on my HG straight away in the first year. Repeat blooms. I can only say mine was grown in a green house in a pot from a small cutting. It did not bloom until it reached a good 3-4ft tall though. The stigma was deformed however and I gave up on this one after a few attempts. Throwing away all of the HG's that I had acquired...kind of wish I'd been more patient now though after hearing some of you have seedpods from this one.

Eric, Lucky you! Most haven't even got that far!

This message was edited Tuesday, Apr 29th 4:22 PM

Glory, we use STS, silverthiosulfate.