China Dragon 4N and Fliquet 4N

[Achamore]

Both of these are from the Eric Young Foundation originally. I bought them from Sue Adams, with Malcolm Perry's help. As they are both in good bloom at the same time, I thought it interesting to photograph them together. China Dragon is on the left in both pics.

 

[Linus_Cello]

Please update this when there are more flowers. I saw a beautiful china dragon last fall that held 3 flowers with a bud (maybe it had 4 blooms at once at one time).

 

[Phrag-Plus]

Both are just gorgeous!

 

[Erythrone]

Wow!

 

[abax]

Hello Don! I'm glad to see the China Dragon again and
hope it blooms for many, many days. All the flowers are
beautiful, but that CD will always be my particular favorite.
How are all things on Gigha and the ice cream business?

 

[Mark Karayannis]

Very nice. Thanks for sharing

 

[Achamore]

Hi Angela, I should have made it clear, this is not the same China Dragon that held its bloom for 99 days. I jumped at the chance to buy 3 more plants from Sue Adams, when that opportunity presented itself. Having said that, these 3 may well be from the same sprouting as the 99-day fellow. All are EYOF, and this bloom has the same coral red colour.

The ice cream is in pretty full swing. We're also bottling our whole milk, pasteurised but NOT homogenised, and it goes into glass bottles. That's been a huge hit, people all over Argyll are talking about it. Good milk has all but disappeared in the UK, unless you live on a farm. We're doing low-temperature batch pasteurising, whereby we hold the milk at 63˚C for 30 minutes. The industry in the UK do "high-temperature" pasteurising these days, whereby they heat the milk to 72˚C for 15 seconds. That alters and damages the taste. Its only advantage is that you can process industrial volumes of milk per hour at 72˚C. The supermarkets of course want cheap cheap milk, so the industry came up with this approach. That means an entire generation in the UK have been raised without knowing what good milk tastes like. You can see photos and more info on our Facebook page, under Wee Isle Dairy.

Hello Don! I'm glad to see the China Dragon again and
hope it blooms for many, many days. All the flowers are
beautiful, but that CD will always be my particular favorite.
How are all things on Gigha and the ice cream business?

 

[blondie]

Fantastic I have both of these both from the foundation, I don'tknow if mine are 4N. My Fliquet is in spike, China Dragon has not decide to bloom but growing strong.

Hope mine are as good as yours are.

 

[Achamore]

More likely than not yours will be 4N, if they are from the EYOF.

 

[abax]

Good news about the milk business. We can hardly find
whole milk here anymore. Mostly, all the supermarkets
carry is 2% or soy milk. Sadly, we don't have a cow! OMG,
glass bottles that can be recycled...wonderful!

 

[SlipperFan]

Very interesting about milk and pasteurization. I grew up on a farm with dairy cattle (among other things), and we drank the milk unpasteurized. Now that was good milk! But your process sounds interesting, and probably does not alter the taste.

Lovely flowers, and photos!

 

[NYEric]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I am not a long petal besseae hybrid fan but I would consider that Fliquet, if they didn't get so big! Yay besseae hybrids!

 

[Achamore]

Very interesting about milk and pasteurization. I grew up on a farm with dairy cattle (among other things), and we drank the milk unpasteurized. Now that was good milk! But your process sounds interesting, and probably does not alter the taste.

Lovely flowers, and photos!

Low temperature pasteurisation was the norm for many decades, as it hardly alters the taste at all. But then commercial pressures from the supermarkets meant that higher volume processes were needed, and so the higher temperature pasteurising was brought in. And so most people never get to taste genuinely good milk.