Morphological Variation and Breeding Potential for Zantedeschia aethiopica
In recent times much breeding work has been done to develop a diverse hybrid swarm of calla lilies for the ornamental trade. However, these hybrids have been developed from species with less cold tolerance and environmental adaptivity than the classic white calla lily, Zantedeschia aethiopica. It appears that the primary reason Z. aethiopica has been left out of the breeding work is that it produces albino embryos which can not survive outside a lab when crossed with other species. Never the less, hybridization may not be needed to see a new era of plant breeding with Z. aethiopica . This is because there is already a fair amount of genetic diversity within this species and if cultivars with unique traits are brought together and selected to concentrate and/or re-arrange genetics of various selections we could begin to see an increase in unique selections. For many years there have been a small number of clones circulating that bore a fai...