The Delphinium Society Registered Charity: 259202 Membership Secretary Dr Roger D Beauchamp FLS FIHort 2 The Grove Ickenham, Uxbridge Middlesex UB108QH UK a +44(0)1895 464694 E: [email protected] (For membership only) To All Members (April 2014) The Future of Breeding New Strains in the Society Future Possible Trials Within the Society You may have heard that in future there will be no annual set trials of delphiniums at the RHS Garden, Wisley. In the autumn of 2014 we may, however, have good offsetting news for you, offsetting in the sense that it will ameliorate the loss of the annual trials. As there are insufficient numbers of new cultivars coming forward for trial, a concentration of thought about this important fact is being applied to this problem. Yes, there are still some new cultivars coming forward for registration but what we must do as a Society is to encourage interest in the procedures involved in the breeding of plants. This, in fact, is at the core of our developing educational programme and we hope that younger members in particular will take up the challenge. You will see listed in the 2014 Year Book the latest registration of cultivars. The Society has a fine tradition of the breeding of new hybrid elatum delphiniums and we still have a hard, essential, core of such people. In the UK this work has been going on since the early 1880s, some 135 years, and the Society became progressively involved from its inception in 1928. It is undeniably the case that a careful breeding programme which is well recorded can bring immense satisfaction to those involved when they see the results of their work. This can be seen annually if the programme is well maintained by dedicated people. It is certainly the case that only a very few people within the Society will, at any one period, become involved in such work and it is almost certainly true that if the Society is not seen to be proactive in stimulating this work then lethargy will set in. A great tradition could well be lost. If that tradition is lost then surely the Society will be largely lost. We must maximise the potential interest. So, what should be the main scope of breeding work in the Society? We must pay primary attention to producing good new cultivars of our famous hybrid elatum strain and facilitate that aim by setting up some kind of assessment for purposes of registration. We must also retrace historical steps by remembering how our hybrid strain came into being in the first place. That was done by hybridisation from species. And there we have a problem because we do not know for certain the species which were involved in the original crosses. Yet, in little more than 25 years William Kelway achieved remarkable results from the species he selected. Now his records are ostensibly lost. This is an object lesson for us all and I would hope that records of future work on species can be achieved within the Society. We now know so much more about species than we have done in the past so a way forward would be to establish good stocks of species which would be grown by several members so as to avoid loss to cultivation. From these we could develop a breeding programme which would not necessarily involve D. elatum itself. This letter is very much an opening presentation so it does not treat in any depth what has to be done in the future. If any member is interested, or willing, to get involved, would they please get in touch with me in the first instance. Hopefully we might be able to arrange a meeting place, perhaps even a meeting during the afternoon of the 2014 Wisley show. Centrally, however, we must make a start on this work. I hope I may hear from some of you. Roger D Beauchamp Membership, Promotions & Publicity Secretary