Where are the professional plant breeders when you need one?



Streptocarpus 'Myfanwy' by Dibley's Greenhouse, U. K.



Story # 15, Part I

            I consider myself to be an amateur plant hybridizer.  Amateur----- because no one ever paid me to do it.  I am self-taught.  I have friends who are university trained and work as professional plant breeders.  They work on whatever plant category the company requires.  None in the U.S.  are working on Streptocarpus that I know of.  The last paid plant breeder was at Oglevee/Ecke Greenhouses but they dropped production, apparently because the numbers were too low.

            I came from the other direction.  I learned about Gesneriads first and the fun of hybridizing second.

            The leading Streptocarpus hybridizing specialist is at Dibley’s in the U. K.  They are a wholesale and retail mail-order greenhouse serving Europe.  Creating new varieties can be fed into their own production to help subsidize the cost of the research & development (2 – 5 years to evaluate a new variety)