Description
‘Mercy Foster’
2}3W-Y
(W. Backhouse, pre-1869)
With gappy, slightly shouldered, spreading perianth segments touched sulphur here and there (charmingly described as “alabaster” in Barr’s 1884 Conference Catalogue) and held surprisingly perpendicularly to the unevenly, strongly ridged and furrowed, widely expanded bowl, for far too long we had this stock down as a fasciated and/or unstable form of ‘Seagull’. As the obscure, overlapping lobes of the much-ruffled corona margin expand, any bright orange staining recedes. The degree of staining appears to vary according to the temperature and perhaps nutrients. In a mature flower, the corona is “canary, very gracefully frilled” (ibid.).
