The Daffodil Association of NSW/ACT Inc NEWSLETTER No. 80 June 2015 President Treasurer Secretary Newsletter Editor Glenn Sheldrick 8 River Avenue Yass NSW 2582 02 6226 4081 Sheila Hodgson 11 Hirschfeld Cres Macgregor ACT 2615 02 6254 8017 Janet Johnstone Illinois Woodstock NSW 2793 02 6345 0376 Sharon Davis 89 Wakefield Gardens Ainslie ACT 2602 02 6161 2304 Email Address: graemecdavis@hotmail.com Keira Bulbs miniature seedling from the Canberra show 2014
Poet seedling shown by Tony Davis at Orange 2014 Swagger sibling champion miniature shown by C & D Poore at Canberra
Notes for the diary Sunday 14 June Saturday 5 September Friday 11 September Meeting Cowra Services Club Lunch at 12 followed by executive meeting then a discussion Blayney show Leongatha show (NDAA championships and meeting) 12/ 13 September Canberra show Saturday 17 September Orange show President s Report Hello all, It s a rather cold bleak afternoon, a good time to put down a few words. All the bulbs are in the ground or pots and quite a few have been sighted on the way to growth. Chris and I are settling to our new life, with our collective bulbs now largely planted in two corrugated raised beds measuring 3m(l) x 1.1m(w) x 0.5m(h). With no supply of worm castings any more we are growing in vegie mix in one bed and garden mix in the other with both topped off with a compost/cow manure mix. Washed river sand is of course under the bulbs. Planting at Bruce was again completed by our small but enthusiastic group a few weekends ago. I believe that a list of the cultivars may appear elsewhere. Members who visited Maureen & Tony last September have their special new bulbs. It s going to be interesting to see who comes out of it as the most astute selector. Lawrence Trevanion gave a very interesting talk to the HSOC membership in Canberra which was very well received. He really is producing some interesting seedlings. The early tazettas and bulbocodiums are sending up buds, and there are signs of life in the new plantings so things are looking ok. It s time now to give some really serious thought to who is going to constitute our executive for the next year and onward. I believe that convention requires those North of the Lachlan River to provide a presidential candidate so thinking caps on Northies! I look forward to seeing everyone in Cowra on June 14. Cheers, Glenn
Some thoughts on miniatures I have been bitten by the bug for growing the smallest category of daffodils and have been building up a modest collection of miniatures in a number of small pots in a corner of the garden. The thing which concerns me a little is the question What constitutes miniature in hybrid narcissus?. Some excursions into the ether to try to isolate an answer to this question have so far led me to a pretty blank wall. The American Daffodil Society (ADS) has a list of cultivars deemed to be miniatures which as at 2013 had just over 200 cultivars and 7 Miniature Grex groups. A Grex is defined to be all progeny and subsequent progeny of a particular cross. Nylon(div 10) and Glenbrook mini cycla(div 6) are two such groups. Any wiser? Nor am I! To add to the confusion, the definition of Intermediates allows only single floreted cultivars from divisions 1,2,3,4 and 11 leaving cyclamineous hybrids (div 6), poeticus (div 9), and dare I say it, bulbocodium hybrids which may be over 50mm in diameter. The Horticultural Society of Canberra Inc. allows cultivars not exceeding 50mm in diameter which are on the NZ or ADS lists and Australian raised seedlings which satisfy the judges that it has the attributes which would qualify it for inclusion in such a list. As a judge I like to think I have a reasonable ability to classify daffodils but frankly this leaves me gasping. Where are the standards by which a judge assesses a new cultivar to be acceptable for such a list? There is also the problem relating to cultivars in divisions 5, 7 and 8. As there is nothing written about this area we are left the mercies of personal opinion on the day of the show. The Canberra and Orange schedules attack the issue in slightly different ways and I was a victim of my own failure to correctly use the information provided in the Orange schedule last year which has prompted me to write on this. I don t have the schedule to hand at the time of writing but if I can recall correctly, the classes for multi-headed cultivars requires the entire head of florets to fall within a specific size (50 mm I think). The little darlings which I blithely put up thinking that they were wonderful were unceremoniously NAS d by Keith, correctly when one reads the schedule I hasten to add. A little too much spread of the components in the flower head. I d like to suggest that we have a look at an in-house solution to the issue in order to encourage the growing and showing of Miniatures by people in the NSW/ACT region. I see this as important as people are now living on much smaller blocks in the larger urban areas and littlies in pots may be the way to go for a lot more people before we get much older. I would welcome thoughts, opinions and critical analysis on this subject in the hope that we can really make the section something bigger and better into the future. I m also happy to pull my head in on the issue if the consensus falls that way. Glenn
Some split seedlings in Tony Davis s plot Poet seedling 2/14 shown at Blayney 2014 with early season flowers
A trumpet seedling in Tony Davis s plot