A. candidissimum

[P.Bruggeman]

Paul,

The different varieties I was talking about are recent imports from Chen Yi.
If you order candidissimum from her you probably will end up with some of
the varieties I described. The only problem is that it is hard to say if the
different varieties grow together in a single population or that Chen Yi has
mixed them together from various populations. Observations of candidissimum
in the wild are rare or absent as far as I know so it could very well be
that the various forms were originally from a single population, only Chen
Yi can tell us that. Promoting unique and especially attractive forms to a
cultivar will probably only be wise if you propagate that clone through
offsets / tissue culture and not through seeds. It might be that
handpollination of a single clone will produce similar looking offspring but
it would really surpise me if cross-pollination of 2 different forms will
have uniform offspring.

Pascal

I didn't realise that A. candidissimum was variable.  Do seeds of these
variable varieties throw true, or are they just unstable and throw an
ocassional oddity?  I'd always thought that they were just the pink and
white striped.  Are seeds ever offered for sale of the various varieties?
(although if they are unstable as I mentioned above then that'd be pretty
pointless as there'd be no better chance than normal seed).