Farm & Ranch
AgriLife Researcher develops a painter’s palette of winter-hardy hibiscus colors
By: Kay Ledbetter
Writer: Kay Ledbetter, 806-677-5608, [email protected]
Contact: Dr. Dariusz Malinowski, 940-552-9941, [email protected]
Steve Brown, 940-552-6226, [email protected]
VERNON – Like an artist using the paint on a palette, Dr. Dariusz Malinowski is mixing pollen to create a flowering masterpiece in the form of tropically colored winter-hardy hibiscus.
Three years after the Texas A&M AgriLife Research breeding team at Vernon created the first blue-flowering winter-hardy hibiscus, they have come up with a new salmon-colored garden jewel, Malinowski said.
“In the past six years, we have disclosed to the Texas A&M University System Office of Technology and Commercialization more than 180 unique lines of winter-hardy hibiscus with very unusual flower and leaf color and shape,” he said.
With his two colleagues, Dr. William Pinchak, AgriLife Research animal nutritionist, and Steve Brown, Texas Foundation Seed Service program director, both based in Vernon, Malinowski continuously works on creating new colors in winter-hardy hibiscus.
“Until a few years ago, these beautiful flowers were available only in white, pink and red,” Malinowski said. “The introduction of a purple color in the cultivar ‘Plum Crazy’ by Flemings Brothers in 1999 was an important progress in the winter-hardy hibiscus breeding.”
He said in contrast to the tropical hibiscus, its distant relative, the winter-hardy hibiscus has a very narrow genetic potential for new colors to appear in the process of selective breeding. One reason is the relatively short time breeders have been attempting to create new flower colors compared to the efforts and time put into developing new color combinations in tropical hibiscus.
The late Georgia Bost, a passionate gardener who collected numerous winter-hardy hibiscus species and developed several new cultivars on her Hibiscus Hill Plantation at Waller, was the first to believe that extensive hybridization among available winter-hardy hibiscus species would eventually result in creation of new colors similar to those in tropical hibiscus, Malinowski said.
“We also believe in this theory and have created to date over 8,000 hybrids among the four native species: H. coccineus, H. dasyacalyx, H. militaris and H. moscheutos, resulting not only in the most illusional blue-flowering hibiscus, but also numerous other colors, including maroon, magenta, dual-colored flowers and the newest with salmon-colored flowers,” he said.
Released to date are the Blue Angel, the first blue-flowering hibiscus cultivar, and the Robert Brown, a chimera, a hybrid where both parental genomes do not fuse completely and work independently to some extent, providing an unpredictable dual-color pattern of the flower. Blue Angel was released in memory of The Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy’s flight demonstration squadron, and Robert Brown was released in memory of Brown’s son, Robert B. Brown.
The salmon color is the third breakthrough in their winter-hardy hibiscus breeding, after the blue and purple colors developed a few years ago, Malinowski said.
However, he said, the program has created a number of unique colors, including all shades of pink, magenta, red, crimson, purple, blue, lavender and maroon.
“Interestingly, some of our winter-hardy hibiscus hybrids started to resemble tropical hibiscuses, both with flower shapes and color combinations,” Malinowski said. “The most unusual hybrid resembles a hollyhock when in bloom.
“Our next goal is to develop yellow and orange colors in winter-hardy hibiscus, and the salmon color is the first step in the right direction,” he said. “There are two cultivars on the market with the name ‘yellow’ in them, but their flower color has nothing to do with yellow, maybe a cream color at best.”
Malinowski said the AgriLife Research breeding team expects to achieve the new colors in the next few years.
“It took us only three years to come up with the blue color, and at that time I was very skeptical if that was even possible, because blue color did not exist in winter-hardy hibiscus. I am positive we will eventually create an orange-flowering hibiscus,” he said.
The winter-hardy hibiscus breeding program at Vernon has been recognized worldwide by breeders and commercial nurseries. The flowers can basically be grown from South Central Texas to Canada, as long as the required winter period is long enough for them to go dormant after the first frost, Malinowski said. The plants resprout from the root the following spring.
“We, the hibiscus breeders, are very well organized and can share new information in a matter of minutes, thanks to the Internet,” he said. “Such an informal collaboration helps the program to be known and focus on breeding goals commonly sought by others.”
Brown said several companies are evaluating different materials for commercialization across the U.S. All of these lines are vegetatively propagated; in other words the commercial plants come from cuttings rather than seed.
“Once these companies decide they wish to include these lines in their product offering, they will license the products, and propagate to begin to increase their numbers,” he said.
Most of the very large ornamental companies have divisions dedicated to the propagation of large numbers of “liners” or small plants from cuttings, Brown said. These companies will then sell the liners to commercial nurseries that in turn will plant them in pots used for commercial sales in big box stores or retail garden centers.
This process, once a nursery makes the decision to commercialize a new product, takes about two to three years before the consumer will see the product in the garden centers in great numbers over a diverse area, he said.
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Find more stories, photos, videos and audio at http://today.agrilife.org
By Rayford Pullen | [email protected]
When May arrives, we start thinking about weed control. With two years of drought under our belts, grass grazed short and hay stocks depleted, what we do now will influence our forage conditions for the entire year. With 75 percent of our annual warm season forages made by July 15 in North Texas, we need to get the grass growing while the sun shines.
Speaking of the sun shining, the biggest deterrent to growing lots of grass is restricted sunlight, and the biggest sun blockers we have are weeds.
Have you noticed weeds are normally just slightly taller than your grass and are probably blocking 90 percent of the sunlight from reaching the grass itself? So obviously, we need to improve conditions, so sunlight reaches the plants we want to grow.
With grass extremely short, more sunlight is hitting the soil surface now, which in turn results in more weed seed germinating. With the moisture we have received, we expect an abundance of weeds this year.
To read more, pick up a copy of the May issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
By Jared Groce
Rural land sales are continuing on a steady pace for early spring, with prices holding very strong with the sell-to-list price ratios remaining very high, even on properties that have been on the market for a longer than usual time period. The total number of transactions are picking up once again as the spring selling season kicks off, and the average acreage continues to decrease.
Larger acreage properties seem to be in higher demand than smaller properties currently, with many buyers simply parking cash in real estate to hedge against inflation. Interest rates seem to have settled down and most experts agree that rates will be reduced by the fed this year. Some lenders have programs in place that allow the buyer to reduce their rates without having to go through a full refinance ordeal.
To read more, pick up a copy of the May issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
Future Farmers of America was founded by a group of farmers in 1928 with the mission of preparing the next generation of agriculture. It has done just that during its 95-year history, as the organization works to give back to others by following its motto, “learning to do, doing to learn, earning to live, living to serve.”
FFA is an organization made up of state associations, and at the helm of the Texas FFA is a team of 12 officers representing their respective areas within the Lone Star State. These individuals dedicate a year of their lives as they serve members, provide leadership, and work together with the state staff and board of directors to develop policy and lead the organization of over 177,000 members.
North Texas is represented by Area IV and Area IV, stretching from Wilbarger County to Bell County and from Runnels County to Grayson County. This year, those chosen to lead this great area are State President Isaac Hawkins Jr., Area IV, and State Vice President Weston Parr, Area V.
Parr is from the Sam Rayburn FFA chapter and the Area V Association, but the leader who now serves more than 19,100 members of Area V entered the FFA organization as a shy teenager who sat in the back of the room.
“I didn’t talk to a whole lot of people. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life or where I could see myself, so I wasn’t involved on my high school campus,” Parr recalled.
“Then I started FFA and slowly but surely, my ag teachers worked me into attending more contests, meeting new people, and speaking. I remember the first time I gave an officer speech to my chapter. I can still remember how embarrassing it was. To see the progression from that moment to speaking on stage at the state convention in front of thousands of people. Now I feel like I can enter the industry I want and be successful all because of what FFA afforded me for five years.”
There is not much Parr did not do during his time in high school. His contest participation included chapter conducting, wool judging, cotton judging, wildlife, and job interview, but his favorite was extemporaneous speaking, which he did not start until his senior year of high school.
“I wish I could go back to my freshman, sophomore, and junior years and start that sooner. I think if I had more time, I would have been more successful than I already was, but that was something I didn’t realize I liked at the time. I’m not naturally somebody who likes to speak in public, but it was actually my favorite,” Parr said.
Parr won several awards during his time competing. In 2023 alone, Parr earned the Texas FFA Service-Learning Proficiency title, was a National FFA Service-Learning Proficiency finalist, and a Texas FFA Extemporaneous Speaking finalist. In addition to his CDE and LDE events during high school, he showed commercial steers at Houston, and boilers at most major shows, participated in the county show with projects in ag mechanics, showed goats from time to time, and showed heifers until graduation.
“FFA provides invaluable resources and knowledge to be successful once you leave high school and you are out of the blue jacket for the first time. I have been a part of a lot of great organizations over the years, and they are all great in their own way, but in my opinion, FFA is the most successful at producing members of society who want to go and do something with themselves,” Parr said.
He was halfway through his time as Area V Association President and attending the national convention when he began to ponder the idea of running for state office.
“This is around the time when you usually figure out if you want to go through and be a state officer or you decide that area officer is your last run. I was unsure of where I wanted to go, but I knew I didn’t want to be done with FFA. I decided maybe it would be a good opportunity not only for me to make more friendships and connections, but also to give back to the program that allowed me to be able to do what I can do today,” Parr explained.
To read more, pick up a copy of the May issue of NTFR magazine. To subscribe by mail, call 940-872-5922.
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