Red lychnis

Sunrise this morning was at 4:02 am, and for a change sunset will also be today, at 11:49 this evening. Day length is down to 19 hours 47 minutes, and we’re losing more that 6 ½ hours of potential sunlight a day. Not daylight, really – it’s still light enough to drive all night, and the sun dips less than 4° below the horizon. Granted it’s only a little more than 45° above the horizon at most, but for practical purposes we still have 24 hours of daylight.

Salmon lychnis--this one's about eye level.

The lychnis (Maltese Cross) is blooming, and I’m beginning to wonder if I have a new hybrid variety. I have lots of red ones, all descended via volunteer seedlings from a single red I purchased years ago. More recently, I bought a packet of salmon seed (actually a very light salmon pink) and raised several plants from it. The salmon is a taller, earlier plant, with umbels of small flowers; the red is shorter, blooms a little later and has relatively large flowers. Both self seed freely.

The first large blooms this year were on plants that looked like the reds, and the blooms were the size of reds, but they were lighter in color. Could pollen from the salmons have fertilized some of the reds? At any rate, I like the new color.

Possible hybrid? Flowers on this and the red are almost 2" across; those on the salmon are less than 3/4".