Mixing the genes...

RAINBOW JUNGLE

The image you see here was from a Thai Leela seedling, and has gone for World Registration, to be named "Rainbow Jungle" for the endangered parrot breeding facility at Kalbarri. They are growing many of my new varieties at their new outdoor theatre. This is their signature frangipani!

Cute and curly

Here's a really unusual plant and though it was grown from a seed in a mixed pack of rubra seeds, from Thailand, I suspect it had a Singapore Evergreen mother. The plant is extremely slow-growing, with very crinkly edges to the stiff, dark green/maroon thin and pointed leaves. Because of its very slow growth, I will probably keep this tree to harvest branches to be rooted on to grow permanently in pots, as patio plumeria.

The real Aussie Fruit Salad

Here we see the lovely Australian Fruit Salad. Unfortunately this variety is a poor pod producer, possibly because the characteristic kink in the neck of the bloom confuses the tiny insects who would otherwise be mother nature's natural cross-pollinators. Because of this, some of my first attempts at cross-pollination centred around Fruit Salad and a nearby Singapore Evergreen.

Here is one of the results of those early crossings. It is now a tall tree, way above my head. The perfume is pretty much the same as the mother-tree, but the colours have become more muted. I was rather ham-fisted in my early days at attempting to cross-pollinate, using the pointy end of an old school compass, and a bristle from my garden broom!

I would suspect that I actually damaged the antlers, deep in the throat of the bloom, releasing the pollen contained there, so the resulting seeds would have been produced by self-pollination.