MH0875B

36 EM 4, Purple Self, Dor Dip

MH0377C * Purple Sphere

My quest for tall-and-small sunfast reds has turned up an extraordinary sunfast purple with excellent branching and budcount.  Bob Sobek came by, saw it, stopped in his tracks and said "Wow, what is THAT?"  The first scape is fairly tall at 36 inches, with 4 long branches and 16 buds.  We could quibble about the color, whether it has a dark eye or light edge, but the sun makes the color fairly even.

Here I'm comparing MH0875B to the excellent Bela Lugosi at 1PM to show the better sunfastness.  BL has curled at the edges, slicked and melted a little.  MH0875B shows none of that: the color is slightly duller.  In the evening, the revived color glows.

I want a brighter color, smaller flower, taller and better branched scape as my goal.  But this is an impressive stop along the way.  The pod parent, MH0377C, is a smaller, taller, brilliant, velvety red that isn't nearly as sun resistant.  Maybe I'll backcross to it.  The pollen parent, Purple Sphere by Kirby (below) is one of the clearest strong purples I know of and not sunfast.  But it is a horrible performer for me in my poor growing conditions.