Hi,

I had heard about Marcelle's Crinums before, but didn't know exactly what that meant until recently.  Now I know, it stands for excellence in Crinum breeding.  Marcelle's Crinums are some of the most spectacular hybrids of recent creation.  She supplies plants for some of the most prestigious gardens in the country.  

I visited part of Marcelle's breeding program recently.  She has 2 breeding areas in East Texas, Crinums grow to blooming size fairly slowly and they are large plants.  So Marcelle needs a lot of room to store her germplasm and to grow out her seedlings for evaluation.  At first I estimated the plot I visited might have 500 Crinum plants.  After walking through it I thought there might be as many as 1,000.  By the time I had seen the front gardens, the propagation chambers, the back gardens, and the "way back" gardens I decided there were over 2,000 plants, plus hundreds of seeds in various stages of germination.  

I understood from Marcelle that she has been interested in Crinums for more than 40 years.  During that time she has gathered and evaluated many species and clones for use in her breeding program.  She has slowly collected the very best starting materials.  For instance, she uses C. bulbispermum in some of her breeding efforts.  But, no regular C. bulbispermum would do, she uses plants that have the largest flowers with the best color, constitution, substance, and floral exuberance.  It is a maxim in plant breeding that one must begin with the excellent materials-weak-flowered parents will tend to produce weak-flowered offspring.  Marcelle has demonstrated again that this old rule still holds true, her seedlings are the proof.  

She has had spectacular success by incorporating C. scabrum and C. bulbisperumum into her efforts.  That is good for us here in the Houston area because these plants do well in this part of the world.  There is no way to list all of the Crinum species and cultivars that I saw on my visit, just as there is no way to fully describe Marcelle's devotion to the project and knowledge of the genus.  

I did borrow some photos from her breeding portfolio, and post them below.  These are representative of the quality and success of her breeding efforts.

Burgundy Seedling No. 4: one of Marcelle's creations with a very deep color and many flowers.  This photo does not adequately display the rich deep burgundy color, but it does give a sense of how many flowers the plant thrusts up.  Crinums can be shy bloomers, but not this one, it has 2 scapes opening at the same time, each with 15-20 blooms.  

'Margie Brown' is another of Marcelle's creations.  It is a spectacular C. scabrum hybrid.  This photo captures just a bit of the vibrant color and vitality of the flowers.

Seedlings:  It would be hard for me to choose among these various unnamed seedlings.  As I recall, these are siblings from a specific cross, each one is genetically distinct, and many blooming here for the first time.  Marcelle has the tough (but delightful) task of choosing which are best and using in her ongoing efforts to produce the perfect Crinum.  In my opinion, she has produced many perfect Crinums.  

Cordially,

Joe J. Shaw, Ph.D.

" I am a former associate professor of Botany and Microbiology at Auburn University, Alabama. I left there in 1998 and now work in the field of human Genomics, but I remain very much interested in plants. "

Posted in the Gulf Breeze Garden Forum, July 11, 2003