LE-Kol'tsa Saturna (E. Lebetskaia)

[Gabi_Munich]

LE-Kol'tsa Saturna (E. Lebetskaia)

ЛЕ-Кольца Сатурна (Е. Лебецкая)

Got this leave from Bogdan last November. I should have separated the babies some time ago but did not get round to do it. Now it is flowering.

[Gabi_Munich]

Found a description:

LE Kol'tsa Saturna (E. Lebetskaia) Semidouble lavender stars with darker, wavy, edge, then thin white edge. Darker lavender ring around eye. Dark green foliage. Standard.

[olivia]

Great variety! The colour is deeper and the flowers are much bigger under warmer conditions. My other varieties usually look much better in winter.

[Birgitt]

The flowers look fantastic Olivia. A beautiful variety.

[Gabi_Munich]

Olivia, your plant shows perfect flowers I like the darker rings showing in the petals.

[illustrator]

This would be a fun plant for hybridising, I love the combination of star, thumbnail and watermark, but not so much the wavy edges of the petals. Maybe I'm going to ask you for a leaf this springtime Gabi!

[olivia]

[illustrator]

I love watermarks!

I like to try hybridising with such a watermark violet and bought Humako's Inova Olivia (what's in a name ... ) some time ago, but didn't get any useful pollen from it. Maybe Thrips ... I am restarting "Olivia" from leaves to hopefully get pollen in half a year or so. Olivia has similar flowers as Saturna

[olivia]

Good luck with it!
What are you trying to get? Another colour?

[illustrator]

a single pansy dropper with the watermark pattern

[olivia]

That sounds interesting and I've never seen anything like that!
Why are you more interested in droppers? As far as I know hybridizers avoid this feature.

[illustrator]

because this is an original trait of the wild violets. It is adaptive in nature: by losing the corolla after the fertile period of the flower, the plant ensures that the old corolla can't destroy the developing seedpod. In the African forest, humidity is so high that a stick-tight flower would eventually rot while the seedpod is still growing. I like "functional" plants and when I was small, I could not find any African violet which was not a stick-tight. For many years, I wondered how the "dropping" would look. I also like diversity: when everyone wants to improve violets by selecting only stick-tights, that is already a reason for me to to grow droppers ...