Brugmansia Jacayna

Jacayna is a very interesting Brug. The plant is stout and a very vigorous grower. Leaves are ovate, wide and a tad serrated. Cuttings root very easily. Nice, strong fragrance. All are fine qualities. The flower, however,  is  unusual with it’s wide, pink-yellow-white colored corolla that sometimes sports seven distinctive corolla teeth.

She’s obviously got a distinctive suavoleans look about her, yet there’s something indefinable about what’s lurking in her genes.

Jacayna is the result of a Frosty Pink x Lexy cross. When I thought about using her for hybridizing, I had second thoughts about those Lexy genes. Lexy has something of a reputation for being difficult: difficult to grow, difficult to flower, difficult to root, just plain difficult. Did I want all of those difficulties bred into whatever cross I might make with her?

I really studied her flower for quite a while. I wanted to try to sort of get into her head, see what I thought she might like to become. It occurred to me that she wanted to throw a lot of corolla teeth. I’ve had eight to nine teeth on some of her corollas, and that was an indication she might want to be a more flore plano-type bloom. She’s a very wide flower. Might be good for widening up some tight double or triple blooms.

In researching her genetic history, I found Golden Lady on her father’s side. Interesting. So, there are a lot of genes for multiple corollas in her background. An idea began to take form. Maybe, I should try to capitalize on those multiple corollas by crossing her with a solid old girl like Adeline with her fat, triple stuffed corolla. Here in Florida, my Adeline like it cool, or those skirts stay stuffed. Maybe, dusting Jacayna with A little Adeline pollen would result in a wide mouthed, flora pleno either pink or yellow. Well, I gave it a shot.

Here are the results:

 

Jacayna x Adeline

Jacayna x Adeline

Jacayna x Adeline

Jacayna x Adeline

Interesting, eh? Out of four seeds from the same pod, four distinctly different results. Two vanilla-colored flora pleno, one vanilla colored single and one snow-white flora pleno. All of them are fat flowers. Nice, wide corollas. So, the conclusion is that crossing a good triple with tight skirts just might give you a nice wide double or super wide single. The key here is width. If you want to make a flower with good width use Jacayna as a pod parent. If you want color, you might do well to cross her with something like Berkonigin or Sam. If all goes well, you’ll have color, width and multiple skirts.

An interesting side note. Jacayna makes very small pods. Mine were no longer than about three inches and about one inch wide. Seeds were very small too, about 1/8″. I was concerned when I planted them, but I had about 90% germination. Power-packed little guys for sure.

Happy pollinating!

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