Paul Veenvliet

[illustrator]

Yay, that's me!

I am playing hybridiser a bit over the last xy years as well. My aim is to combine some of the colours of violet cultivars with the overall characteristics of the wild (species) plants. I don't have any varieties registered. My plants so far:

Paul's Wild Beginning: a cross which I use as the base for further hybridising. Standard, blue-violet dropper, rather similar to its parent S. intermedia, but it inherits both the genes for pink flowers and for star-shaped flowers from its other parent. (Pixie Pink x S. intermedia)

Paul's Wild Star: the logical offspring of Wild Beginning: a leggy small standard with light pink, star-shaped flowers. Dropper. (Self-pollinated Wild Beginning)

Paul's Fake Velutina: a mini or semi-mini which is similar to velutina Light (it's mother) but smaller and with blue-violet flowers with a dark centre. This plant is a dropper, but it sometimes retains flowers, which are over time bleaching in the light. Rather resistant to low temperatures on the window sill! (Wild Beginning x S. velutina light)

More coming in time, probably. My main interest is the maintenance of the species, hybridising is just for fun and out of curiosity

P.

[Gabi_Munich]

Cool, now already 3 hybrids! I remember Paul's Wild Beginning and Paul's Wild Star .... but Paul's Fake Velutina is new. Congratulations!

[illustrator]

All not registered ...

I just hope that one day we get the real velutina in Europe one day. At the moment, I think that we all have velutina "Light", which is a sport (or, possibly, a hybrid - has anyone ever self-fertilized its flowers?). The "real velutina" is larger and has dark violet flowers. In the USA this is one of the more commonly grown species plants. It may well be the only one which we don't have in the EU!

Fake Velutina. (flowers which do not drop, bleach in the sunlight, Because of this, it has at the same time pale and darker flowers):



On the left is a shumensis. Below are some set leaves to check for stability and to make a backup. On the right, halfway hidden, is a sibling of Fake Velutina which behaves oddly: it turns its leaves so much to the light that they are standing nearly vertical. Once mature, they stay in whichever position they grew. However, this one has by far the darkest reverse that I have seen. I used it as a pollen-parent with Fake Velutina as seed parent. At this moment, seedpods are ripening. Let's see if I get a small plant with this very dark reverse which doesn't turn its leaves as much ...

[olivia]

Fake Velutina is really cute!
I agree that there are many collectors that have the velutina lite named as velutina. There's even a nursery selling it as velutina although they have attached the description of velutina and the photo of velutina lite.One day somebody will figure it out that the description doesn't match the photo. But then again, we all make mistakes...

[illustrator]

This will only become confusing when we have the "real velutina" in Europe. And, probably, one day someone will get velutina Amazon as well.