Quadruple Hybrids: Albiflora X (Officinalis X (mlokosewitschi X Macrophylla) )

The fertile hybrids of "mloko" X "Macro" were crossed onto a number of plants, for here of course there seemed to lie one more possibility of obtaining a race of yellow hybrids. Two triple hybrids [albiflora by the hybrid "mloko" X "Macro"] still exist under the numbers 14400 and 14414. Tall plants with very early pale ivory flowers, these set seed. Although never catalogued, this triple strain should surely be used by future hybridists.

The "Mloko"-"Macro's" were also crossed onto various forms of officinalis: with Otto Froebel they took fairly well and produced a strain of triples that were fertile and that were themselves crossed onto albiflora. The resulting plants are thus Quadruple Hybrids, for in them are combined the bloods of four species: "Macro," "mloko," officinalis, and albiflora. Numbering some one hundred and twenty all told, these plants began to bloom in 1943, and are thus the last hybrids to come from the Saunders hand. First catalogued in 1949, some dozen or fifteen are now listed. The prevailing color of the flowers is an ivory sheen quite unique and beautiful. Many of them, like Lady Gay, are strikingly flared—a few, like Papilio, are delicately veined like a butterfly's wing; Starlight, which, though very like Dr. White's Clair-de-Lune, blooms a week earlier, and Sunlight, are clear ivory yellow. Firelight is a fine bright early rose-pink. These hybrids are nearly sterile though of course like most such things not absolutely so, and there are little F2 seedlings coming along in the seed-beds which should be blooming in a few years.