Tillandsia Silverton Click thumbnails for full size, scaled to a new window.
Tillandsia Silverton From BCR ... "Mature rosette to 34cm diameter x 20cm high. Narrow, recurving, scurfed grey-green leaves. Erect or arching inflorescence to 20cm. long with fluted, open purple petals on a highly scurfed peduncle." paleacea x streptocarpa by Barry Genn, Qld, 1985
Rob Bower 10/20 F2
Pam Butler 10/20 F2
Rob Bower ... "T. Silverton - from Pam Butler." Pam Butler ... "That is a seedling from my Silverton and looks quite different to mine. Love the colour of your flowers." Rob Bower ... "OK so its Silverton selfed? It’s a pretty little thing." Derek Butcher ... "Seedlings obtained from a hybrid should not be given the name of Mother. In creating sex sells there is the dance of the chromosomes creating different seedlings. The resultant seedlings should have a note of their origins until they are mature and given a name of their own." Geoff Lawn ... "As it's a seedling off the hybrid T. Silverton (paleacea x streptocarpa), it cannot retain that name but needs a separate, registered cultivar name.
Pam, were the seedling batch from man-made, deliberate selfing of T. Silverton or from "birds-n-bees" ?" Pam Butler ... "This plant is very easy to set seed. I would have just twisted a leaf into the flower and every year get lots of seed pods and hence I have many different plants and I think it would be very difficult to name them all. They are all worthy of growing and I must admit these days I have been marking them as T. Silverton seedlings." Geoff Lawn ... "Well, as your seedlings are T. Silverton selfed, they should be marked T. Silverton F2, meaning second filial generation.
Otherwise the queries will come on which is the true, original T. Silverton, particularly if the "F2" bit gets dropped off labels as "unimportant".
Hybrids generally do not breed true from seed." Derek Butcher ... "Yes, seed raising is full of hazards. A true species crossed with a different species produces a seed batch which has hybrid vigour and is similar. The seedlings differ from the parents by being not as fertile. Pollen count is down, and this is how natural hybrids can be detected in the wild.
In the wild it is likely that backcrossing with either parent is more likely to occur than selfing which is not like what happened to you.
You don't know if your pollination was a success until the seedlings flower and you can try to answer what may have happened. This takes years with Tillandsias, not like the few years as with Neoregelia."
Rob Bower 10/21 'Silverton F2'
Initial emails that triggered registration of T. 'Silverton'. Tony Tucker 25/04/20 ... "Til. paleacea x streptocarpa. I was passing time today by going through old WABS newsletters and came across this featured hybrid in Dec 2013/January 2014. p.14 mentions a specimen plant exhibited by Stan, and that it was also previously featured in December 2009 WABS newsletter. 2009 was before I moved to Perth so if someone kept the back issues, please dig out and see if the earlier article states the hybridist or some provenance? I'd ask Geoff with the WABS library but who knows whenever a next meeting happens.
The hybrid doesn't appear in the BCR searches by seed/pollen parentage.
Is that recorded in your import records, seed growing records, or plant tags? Is that still being grown in Perth or comes from over east?
There isn't a mistaken ID of Stan's Oktanort in 2019 as reichenbachii x streptocarpa that appears superficially similar but seems the article would have noted that.
Thanks for ending my confusion if the Dec 2009 Newsletter (Vic ?) turns up records." Geoff Lawn ... "Hi Tony, It's probably irrelevant, but the reverse cross T. streptocarpa x paleacea was registered in 2016 as T. 'Holm's Unicorn'.
This cross doesn't appear in Peter Tristram's List of Holm imports, but I will include Peter here in case there is a known link. I will see if I can find your nominated cross in WABS library in a copy of Dec. 2009 WABS Newsletter." Geoff Lawn ... "I just located my personal copy of WABS Bromeliad Newslink, Dec-2009- Jan, 2010. Page 11 reports from the Nov. 2009 WABS meeting and has 2 photos (black/white of the blooming cross and 2 photos (black/white) of both parents in bloom. The text says: "Tillandsia paleacea x streptocarpa exhibited by Stan Olejnik is a hybrid of unknown origins." Probably Vic took and has the original colour photos of this cross.
P.S. Just received Tony's emailed photo of the Newslink page in question. I did try googling the cross T. paleacea x streptocarpa but all I got was from Kakteen in Czechoslovakia but quoting the reverse cross, although the photo there doesn't look like the T. Holm's Unicorn." Vic Przetocki ... "Probably one of Stan’s seed raised plants which he hasn’t registered yet, label looks like paleacea x streptocarpa. Maybe Stan can shed some light." Derek Butcher ... "As you say it would be better to solve this at a local level rather than trying to link this to a hybrid made by someone else, somewhere else. The parents quoted have loads of synonyms so we would have varied clones to give different results in the greges." Barry Genn ... "It's one of mine to be registered. Stan and others got it from me some time ago." Geoff Lawn ... "Barry Genn's T. paleacea x streptocarpa is now registered as T. 'Silverton'."
