Utopia`s Vico Pinks
By Carrie Kruger Utopia Clivias
Since registering our original Vico Pink plants in 2016, collectors from all over the world want to add some of these beauties to their collections.
Our original Vico Yellow and Vico Peach plants were purchased from Charl Malan who obtained them from Mr Nakamura when he visited Japan in 1997.
In 2004, I crossed my Vico Yellows with the best Vico peaches. In 2010, most have flowered very pretty pinks, peaches and a few yellows. From these plants, I selected only the best pinky peach flowers for further breeding. These plants were named, “Vico Pink Clouds”, “Vico Pink Explosion”, “Vico Pink Parfait”, “Vico Pink Vogue” and “Vico Peach Kyla”. These siblings were crossed with each other, with the hope of producing even better pinks. The colour and shape of the flowers as well as the umbels, are important characteristics we look for. Most of these plants have beautiful umbels with large and sometimes, recurved flowers. The flowers are pink than peach.
In the first generation, we still had about 25% yellows emerging from the first crosses.
The first flowers of the second generation started flowering in 2015 and 2016. We were amazed to see that this new generation produced no more yellows. It seems that the pink gene is more stable and even when using a large yellow as pod or pollen parent to improve the flower count or shape of the flower, it produced pinks and a few peach flowers with a very small % of yellows.
Some very special ones have been named and will be used in our breeding programme, “Vico Baby Pink” is a seedling of “Vico Pink Vogue” and “Vico Pink Parfait”. Other special ones selected by us are “Vico Pink Butterfly”, “Vico Pink Giant” and “Vico Pink Sky”.
We have also started using the Vico Pinks in our interspecific breeding to breed large pendulous peach or pink flowers. We have flowered one such plant bred by Charl Malan using Vico Peach on a yellow interspecific.
Over the years we have sold many of our Vico Pink and peach seeds to enthusiasts all over the world. We hope that they will flower as beautiful as the ones that have flowered here for us.
