White Vanguard

Seidl seedling# 79H14-1 or 79H5-7?

White Vanguard has, by benign accident, been distributed as two different seedlings as noted by Ruud. They possess two different parentage accordingly. #79H14-1 is the true White Vanguard, an Archangel seedling, that I acquired from Bill Seidl over a dozen years ago. It blooms very early, concurrent with the last blooms of Claire de Lune, has warm tints upon first opening and stands well without mechanical support. I was unsuccessful in trying to post a picture here, but have posted images of a newly opened bloom and the bush of #79H14-1 on my Facebook page Chotkowski Gardens for those who are interested.

Henry Chotkowski has mailed me the following images of White Vanguard, the ‘better’ one #79H14-1.

First image shows the bush habit with free standing blooms and foliage to the ground; Photo 2 is a freshly opened bloom; and Photo 3 is a bloom a couple of days older.

Years ago now, Bill sent out a very few seeds which involved WV breeding, and I managed to get one double white seedling from them.  In turn, I used it’s pollen, along with pollen from ‘Greenland’, in a big hybridizing push for early white doubles. Pollen from the seedlings involving WV seemed to give notably better results than seedlings using ‘Greenland’.  I think we saved about a dozen seedlings from this effort to evaluate again when we dug up the seedling patch this fall.

If Bill sent seeds involving this sort of white breeding to me, my sense is that there must be others who also got these seeds from him.  The one plant I grew had a quite nice double white flower, but it’s stems were very weak, yet as mentioned above, when used as a pollen parent on other things, we obtained some whites with much better stems.

One has to look at time as cheap when it comes to hybridizing it seems, as it will be a couple of more years before we get a true idea of what these seedlings really are, once they have had their chance to be grown to maturity from divisions.   In Oregon, on the west coast of the US, seedlings can grow fairly quickly, and plants in their second year of flowering can give the impression of being mature enough, and with enough stems on each plant, to give one a reasonable representation of their nature and mature flower form.  But as time has passed, and I’ve dealt with more seedlings, it is seeming to me that seedlings must be divided and grown on again from divisions for one to get a real sense of their true nature.

Bob Johnson