another ID please

This one came to me as Ipomoea nil 'Ukigumo', and I'm hoping someone can tell me if this is correct, and if not, what the real Ukigumo looks like (hopefully in a few days, I'll find one in better shape to take a pic of).

Whether or not this is the real Ukigumo, I am totally in love with it - thank you PamSue and the trader you got it from (Cynda). To us, this is just spectacular.

This is one of the last (of approximately 56 kinds of MGs in our garden this year) to open. Emma's rose and chocolate-rose silks opened up weeks ago in the same part of the garden (also fairy-tale flowers). It's also extremely vigorous with approximately 15' long vines, well branched.

Thanks in advance for any advice,
karen

Yours is Blue Silk....Cynda has been selling Blue Silk as Ukigumo for some time. Ukigumo is more of a striped pattern like the tie-dyes, only it is a light blue with white.

Sandy

for a photo...

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=2393800

Hi Karen,

I agree with Sandy.
Your MG looks like Blue Silk to me.
Also, Blue Silk has tan seeds.
I have Ukigumo started, but no blooms yet.

Gorgeous Bloom!

Emma

Here is one of my recent Blue Silks

hi karen
that is blue silk..and a pretty one ..i hope you get lots of blooms with that one.
unfortunately the seller has mislabeled so you have the right name for that one

emma ..i know blue silk is supposed to have tan seeds..so if you come across dark seeds for blue silk would that indicate it is something else?

pam

Thank you everyone - have corrected my records. Well, less than 8 daylight hours of predictably dry weather - am heading back out there to tell these vines who's boss - lol. I think I've discovered 50 reasons to grow MGs in pots, but growing them in the dirt among all the other summer flowers was too irresistable.

Speaking of who's boss - I've been keeping up okay with I. purpurea 'Indigo Feathers' in terms of keeping it separated from neighbors and bagging. But, Emma's I. purpurea 'Shibori' and "large, very pretty" MGs have just begun to bloom and are now mingling in the upper canopy of the magnolia. To save seeds, my plan this afternoon is to cut them back and transplant their rootballs from immovable containers to ones that I can move around and finish 'em off indoors under DH's workbench lights (DH has caught the MG bug, so he's okay with that - he'll still have room). Wacha think?

karen

Karen-Blue. . .
You are hiilarious.

Be sure to put any cuttings that do have seed pods in water so you can also get those seeds.
SO, DH has it too now *ha* I love it!

Why don't you try to leave as much of the vine as you can before you do any cutting and stick a tomato cage in your container?
BE SURE TO FEED YOUR PLANTS FISH EMULSION WHEN YOU MOVE THEM

I will look forward to seeing more photos of your beauties.

Pam . . .
As far as I know, Blue Silk always has the light seeds so I think it would be safe to assume that if you have a dark seed labeled as Blue Silk that you definitely have something else.

Emma

Look at this Blue Silk Bloom.
White in the Middle fading to a Very Pale Blue to only an outline of the Darker Blue at the edge of the petals.

Karen, nice flower you have there.. I really like those big flowers.

Emma, yours looks perfect.

Sandy,

Do you know if Ukigumo has the tan seeds also? I have one that has tan seeds and looks like a blue tie dye, large chartruse variegated leaves and sounds like what you just described.

A.

Thanks Antoinette,
I really do love my Blue Silks.

If Sandy or no one knows about the seed color of Ukigumo, LMK and I'll dig out my seeds and see what color mine are.

Emma

Antoinette....I have four seeds left in my commercial packet of Ukigumo. Three are tan and one is brown. I can't say if I've ever grown them...I think I traded a lot of them away and that's why I have only four left.

As far as the Blue Silk...I still have three unopened commercial packs from Park Seed & I also have a "questionable" stash of Blue Silk from Park that is a mixture of tan and brown seed. When I would trade them or sell them at ebay I always pulled the brown seeds from the commercial packs. Can't say if I've ever grown the brown seed version or not.

Here's a couple variations of Blue Silk that I've grown over the years....

Here's another Blue Silk...

and lastly, a whiter version of Blue Silk...

The Blue Silk sold by Park
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/77673/
is the same as Sakatas
"Akatsuki no Tsuyu" also sometimes spelled as Tsiuyu
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/103762/

The seeds as distributed by Park were usually beige >although I have encountered a few dark seeds in packets from Park...

The seeds distributed by Sakata are also mostly(!) beige but also contain a higher percentage of some dark seeds...so I would say at this point that Blue Silk / "Akatsuki no Tsuyu" is usually beige seeded but NOT always...

TTY,...

Ron

Thanks Sandy,

Thanks Emma,
it will be interesting to see what it is.. I've got to keep my eye on it for more blooms and take another photo, but I gotta tell you, they sure all look blue tie dyes to me, the only difference are the color of the leaves and the color of the seeds from the reg Tie Dye. I have lots of photos of the Blue Tie Dye but can't tell them apart and I can't see the leaves on the photos.

Thanks for that information Ron. . .

Antoinette, post more blooms of your unknown when you can.

Emma

Sandy & Emma, your pics show a fascinating range for one flower.

Emma, your pianissimo rivals winter ice - thank you for focusing me on most successful way to make this vine reachable.

Gourd, you wrote, "I have one that...looks like a blue tie dye, large chartreuse variegated leaves..." Welp, I don't have a picture yet, but another incredible MG from PamSue came labeled as Keiryu, but looks more like your description - it has luminous yellow-ish variegated leaves with a tie-dye-like flower with a blue that leans more to turquoise than violet. It's just begun to bloom - 5 so far - you and I will both have to post pics when we get them.

I really appreciated the different information from Ron & Sandy on trade routes that some of the seed discussed here have been on. Does anyone remember hearing about the old silk route across what is now the Sahara desert that was identified not too long ago by satellites we've put in orbit around earth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_trade ). Evidently, different commodities had their own routes dating back to prehistoric times and linking Africa with Asia and the Mediterranean - don't know when Europe joined in. Wonder if any MGs ever joined that traffic somewhere along the way? This is how us old army brats amuse ourselves - don't mind me.

Can you see the butterfly in the magnolia? If not for it, I wouldn't have realized where those vines were flowering

Thanks Ron, that is very helpful information. I have one that kinda looks like that first one Sandy has, but the edges are lavender, also with the tan seeds. Don't recall if I took a photo of it.

Also, the blue silk seeds that I'm getting are really shriveled up, are they supposed to look like that? I don't even think they will germinate.

That other one that I needed an ID for looks like it may be Matsukaze, it did not bloom again.

Karen, Sandy, and Emma - I gotta tell you all that your Blue Silk blooms are gorgeous! What a pretty vine!!! What awesome genes in that cultivar! It's amazing all the different blooms that come from this vine! I haven't grown any MGs with blue blooms that color, but they are simply divine! :-)

Thanks, Becky. I've bagged some flowers, but from a May 21 sowing, this was one of the last ones to start blooming here, and it's hard to tell right now if I'll get pods either before frost or that will ripen indoors after frost in water.

Karen - You sowed them in May????? Oh my gosh! I can't believe it took THAT long to bloom and set seeds! All the ones I have been posting recently were sowed August 1st and within 5-6 I had blooms on almost all of them. I wonder why it took so long for yours to bloom? I wonder if your zone had something to do with that? That's really interesting!!!

Becky, some started blooming in June - the first ones were Ipomoea nil 'Star of India' from PamSue via Gerris2 and Ipomoea turbinata, second generation from Emma.

Some vines got more shade than others, but still, Emma's Blue Silk and Gardener's Ukigumo x youjiro crosses are sharing the same area with Emma's rose silks, but the rose silks have been blooming since July, whereas one of Gard05's crosses still has not yet begun to bloom, and it gets more sun than the silks. I'm going to try to propagate that one by layering a vine so I can continue growing it indoors after frost - Gard05 WILL get that picture in her grow-out thread - just don't know when (it has extremely unusual leaves).

When I get time, I'll start a thread on relative times from seed to bloom that hopefully others will chime in on, too. Fchilders began something along these lines - I think around last May? I hope he's doing well - we haven't heard from him in a while. It seems like when any of us leaves, it leaves quite a void - the love of MGs is so intense around here.

Good idea for a thread, Karen! I'd be interested to see the growing time for Fall vines. Since I started 17 more vines from seeds today, I am hoping they do as well as my August starts did. :-)

You are right about Fchilders. What happened to him???? Anyone know?

To Thicken the Soup...

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/669859/

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3987067


TTY,...

Ron

We haven't heard from Frank in a while and I was wondering where he has been. I don't think I ever had his cell phone # but I did meet him and his wife once. I'll try to find a number on him. He told me he talked to Ron on the phone in a recent email. His last email to me was on Sept. 7th.

This message was edited Sep 25, 2007 2:54 PM

I've noticed that the Blue Silk seed are more susceptible to thin seedcoats and molds and fungal attack than most other seeds...this weakness is exacerbated by harvesting too early and not allowing the seeds to dry properly before storing...

Thanks, Beth - let him know he's missed if you can.

Ron - my thoup thickeneth over

bluespiral,

All my ukigumo x youjiro and ukigumo x picotee grew and bloomed very well. I selected some that came out pretty neat and now I have already been in the process of growing seeds from those! I`ll let you know how the F3s are doing. If you want to we can trade seeds or if you see any you like from my F3 results then feel free to ask. You could try them again in a different spot.

I will tell you they demand full sun. They are shade intolerant. The only shade they would need is maybe afternoon shade if it is very hot 85 or above degrees. The larger flowered varieties are more shade tolerant up to a point.

They hate being started early too. It is better to start these right after the last frost after it gets warm about April 15th for my garden. If you start them right after the last frost or a little later they will grow better and bloom quicker. Remember how quick the ones X tried out bloomed? It was because she planted them later...they bloomed quicker to hurry up and make seeds before it got cold.

Karen

I`m going to draw a picture of my ideal growing spots map of my yard and illustrate the structures and building and also the movement of the sun to show how these things affect the growth of plants. That might be interesting along with some of the other data being gathered.

This is my Ukigumo:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=2393800

It has a light blue blizzard,white throat and a yellow/green variegated vine. So far the third generation of hand pollinated seed has been exactly the same. All these traits could carry on as long as it doesn`t get crossed by the bees. This is why I save some hand tied pods every year. The seeds are very dark on these.

Karen

Speaking about whether Blue Silk has beige or brown seeds, in this thread - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/776680/ , Beth reports that she got a beige one and a brown one in the same pod. Also, even in my bagged pods, I got half beige and half brown (not to mention 1 pod with 5 "calico" seeds - brown splotches on beige field). Thought that was interesting.

Regarding A's query ( http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3955758 ) asking,

"Do you know if Ukigumo has the tan seeds also? I have one that has tan seeds and looks like a blue tie dye, large chartruse variegated leaves and sounds like what you just described."

I just checked the seeds from an MG I grew this summer said to be Keiryu , but similar to A's foregoing description, and they are black. A, here's a pic of my vine - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4107166 . Did you get a pic of your vine? I'm curious how similar they may look to each other. Elsewhere, MGJapan said my vine was Keiryu because it changed to lavender over the course of a day, whereas, he said, that Ukigumo does not.

Karen-05, thank you, I'd love some Ukigumo seeds. I've already promised you seed I grew out from your mixed Picotee (Kikyo) seed you sent me last spring - remember the double, dark-blue Kikyo (unfortunately only OP)? Am letting my MG seed air out a bit longer before mailing it off.

Seedsower, I've got you down for the double dark-blue Kikyo, too - and Becky and A and Emma and some others who asked for it. (There are only 13 seeds to go around, and I can't take any more requests on that one.)

I've noted folks who showed interest in my Blue Silk seed - have just enough to go around, so cannot take any more requests on that one right now, either.

If I left anyone out who has already asked, let me know.

ps - anyone who may be interested in my Blue Silk seed better read this - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4232289 . I apologize.