Saintpaulia, or, as they are usually called, violets, are plants not only for the home, but also for the offices of various companies. Red terry bullfighting violet, simple purple with yellow eyes, white with an elegant blue rim, light pink, in separate small pots or placed among other types of flowers - the variety of forms of hybrids of African (Uzambara) saintpaulia gives room for creative solutions.
Ideal for the room designer
Almost every respectable modern company has indoor flowers. Floristics as a component of interior design is present in almost every solution.
Floral designers love decorating offices with indoor plants. Hybrids of very beautiful violets - worthy of project execution: they bloom constantly, maintenance is minimal, and training of the employee in charge of the plants is a quick business.
Among the creative interior design solutions, violet Bullfight red is used quite often: the variety has been known for more than eight years. Looks original in high-tech, baroque and English style.
The purity of classic lines and art deco pretentiousnessgive an excellent opportunity for mutual existence with a rich (good red wine) shade of hybrid saintpaulia bullfighting gold.
Where and when did the uzambar violets appear?
Among subtropical plants, there are many interesting small and huge flowers. Paying attention to an interesting specimen, collecting seeds and sending them to their homeland (in this case, to Germany), W alter von Saint-Paul, who served in Africa in 1882, was lucky. His father Ulrich von Saint-Pol gave them to Hermann Wendland, a botanist (it was not difficult - the baron was the president of the German Dendrological Society). Wendland grew a flower from seeds, described it (1893) and named it Saintpaulia teitensis in honor of his father and son.
Industrial cultivation of Saintpaulia was bought out by the firm of E. Benari, but only in 1927 did the passion for this plant as a houseplant begin in the USA. By 1949, breeders around the world had bred one hundred varieties of Saintpaulia. The plant is popular among ordinary flower growers and breeders. Demand is unchanged, especially since more than three thousand varieties are already known today. Violets of Russian breeders occupy a worthy place among varietal hybrids, red terry violets of breeder Elena Korshunova are in special demand.
EC Hybrid
Any variety of violets has not only its own name, but also a prefix - as is customary among breeders. EK are hybrids of Elena Korshunova, a breeder from Tolyatti. She specializes in obtaining large-flowered (simple andterry) violets. Her variety of violets EK Bullfight immediately became interesting for flower growers from Russia and the CIS countries. Today, many nurseries near and far abroad offer this variety for sale.
Violet Bullfight Description
The hybrid gives a very even dense green rosette of relatively large leaves (25-30 cm). The flowers are the largest (just huge - up to 8 cm) among the red-flowered.
Depending on the light, the bullfighting violet (the photo confirms this) can be colored in different ways: from bright scarlet to ruby (red wine). It blooms constantly (this is a feature of the variety): first, three low peduncles appear, each with one or two flowers, buds open, and the next three peduncles grow. A hat, like other terry saintpaulias, the bullfight violet (the photo clearly shows this) does not form, but this number of huge flowers is enough to enjoy the plant. Each subsequent flowering gives the same size of the petals - this is also a feature of the variety.
The variety responds gratefully to top dressing and compliance with light and humidity conditions.
According to the advice of flower growers, it is better to remove the bottom row of rosette leaves in a bullfight violet in a timely manner.
What is violet sport?
Violet Bullfight gold - a sport from the main hybrid Bullfight.
In new fantasy varieties, children of the next generations, when working on a hybrid, do not always convey its main features. These kids are called sports. Sometimes they are very worthy, new varieties are obtained on their basis.
Violet Bullfight gold blooms large semi-double flowers on strong peduncles. Rosette variegated, at the very top under the flowers is very light.
Ruby-red flowers look very impressive against its background. Compactness, strength of peduncles along with intense shade - such a combination of characteristics cannot always be achieved in delicate violets.
Saintpaulia reproduction
To obtain the declared variety, you need to know how to propagate, how to plant a violet later, how to care for it so that it blooms constantly.
There are three ways to get offspring from bullfighting violets: rooting a daughter outlet, growing from leaves, seeds. The first two are available to any grower, and the third is used by breeders.
- To get a new plant from the outlet, you need to grow a stepson on a violet. How? The bullfighting violet variety rarely develops child rosettes, so it needs to be forced to release a stepson. To do this, pinch her growth point. Violet will begin to create new points of growth - these are future outlets. When they are 2-3 cm in size, they are carefully cut from the violet and planted in a pre-prepared wet mixture in a pot. Close with a plastic bag to maintain constant humidity. After 2-3 weeks, the outlet will give roots, evidence of this is the growth of the leaves of the outlet. The package can be removed.
- The most affordable way to breed bullfight and fight hybridsbulls gold - grafting by leaf. In a strong adult plant, a leaf is cut off from the second row of the outlet along with the petiole. Then it must be cut with a thin (disinfected) blade at a distance of 2-3 cm from the base of the sheet. Place the prepared leaf in warm soft (can be distilled) water so that the base of the cutting does not rest against the bottom of the container. English breeders advise placing leaves on the edges of the plate: they lie freely, and in the case of several varieties, you can place the plates under the bottom of the plate. In transparent containers and plates, you can see when the roots appear. It is not necessary to wait until they become large: for good rooting, their length of one and a half to two centimeters is enough. The stalk is carefully buried in moist, loose earth (or sphagnum moss), in three weeks green leaves will appear - this is the future outlet. When they grow to two centimeters, the mother leaf can be cut off (first half, then the rest after a few days). If the room temperature is low (below 20-22 degrees), rooting may not occur. For the same reason, you can’t put a pot with a cutting on a windowsill: during the day, direct sunlight here overheats the soil mixture, and the night air cools.
Violets: how to care
In order for Saintpaulia Bullfight to bloom (this also applies to the Bullfight variety) constantly, plants do not need to be transplanted into huge pots when buying, although the diameter of the outlet may be larger than the size of the pot. In a huge pot, only the root system will actively grow, and violets will not want to bloom.
The soil for these hybrids during transplantation (or grafting) can be prepared from different components: peat, coniferous land, sod and leaf in a ratio of 1:1:2:3. It's easier to use a special potting mix for violets from the store.
It is not necessary to display pots with collectible saintpaulias of Bullfighting and Bullfighting gold varieties on windowsills: violets do not like direct sunlight. You can place them on the rack, setting it close to the window. In order for these varieties to bloom constantly, you need to provide them with daylight hours of 12-14 hours. In the autumn-winter period, this is achieved by backlighting with fluorescent lamps with a yellow glow.
The watering of varietal violets should be approached quite strictly: only when the earthen lump dries up, you can water the flowers, and even then only along the edge of the pot. When moisture gets on the leaves of violets Bullfight gold, they can even change color, which is completely undesirable with a variegated rosette. Cold water contributes to the decay of the root system, so its temperature during irrigation should be two to three degrees higher than room temperature.
Experienced flower growers advise to feed flowering Saintpaulias Bullfight and Bullfight gold at least once every two weeks by buying special top dressing in the store.
For information: how new varieties are obtained
To get new colors in violets, new flower forms, you need to be patient and study the advice of breeders.
First you need to understand how Saintpaulia propagates by seeds, try to grow new plants by collecting these tiny “dust particles” in timefrom the mother violet. And only after a small seedling blooms (this will not be earlier than in 9-10 months), you can be puzzled by hybridization.
To obtain a new variety, two plants are needed: pollen must be removed from one (this is the father) and transferred to the pistil of the other (this is the mother). So the bullfight variety was obtained. It would seem that everything is simple, but it needs to be done with jewelry at the moment when the pollen of the paternal plant has ripened and when the mother plant is ready (a droplet on the pestle testifies to this). Moreover, it is necessary to remove the stamens from the mother so that it does not pollinate itself. And if these processes do not coincide in time, what then? You need to learn how to conserve pollen, which is also not easy at all.
Then, after successful pollination, you need to wait until the seeds ripen (from five months if the process is started in spring, and up to nine months if in autumn). The peduncle, on which pollination took place, first increases in size, then twists a little, then begins to dry out.
The box with seeds must be removed, dried, and only then opened. Wait two or three months, and only then plant the seeds, pouring them onto a moist soil mixture, covering it with glass or a bag, that is, creating a greenhouse mode.
Advice for a beginner violet breeder
The beauty of flowering hybrids of violets Bullfighting, their intense color, ease of propagation by cuttings often cause an inexperienced grower to have a keen desire to create a new variety himself. But it is not so much the difficulties of the process itself that lie in wait for it, but the lack ofsystematization skills, that is, paperwork. Therefore, it is still easier to reproduce proven varieties, you can even try to root flower stalks (another way to propagate saintpaulias) - this is still better than getting a new hybrid without knowing what qualities it should have. What if an accidental crossing occurs and the plant will not be able to transmit the desired qualities? And if dominant and recessive traits were not taken into account? How then to deal with the plant? Is it a new variety or not?
Only the ability to self-organize will help you become a real breeder, and not just an amateur grower.
