Weatherball 90 – American Form

Weatherball 90 – American Form.  Lins.  1962. Lactiflora cultivar.  Blend of pink, salmon and cream. No seedling number nor parentage given. This full double flower is a remarkable blend of pink, salmon and cream. It has excellent stems, straight and strong. If it had not won the Bank award it would have been introduced under the name COLOR MARVEL.  Typically produces a side bud or two, but none may be present.  Outstanding and in high demand.  Matches plants at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, which onboarded the cultivar just after introduction.  Premium divisions ship late September to mid October.

‘Weatherball 90’ – European Form

Note:  This cultivar has seen distribution in two different forms which are completely different.   Shortly after introduction by Lins there was likely a mixup in distribution.  One form was sent to Europe and the other stayed home here in the United States. Plants typically grown in the United States (‘American Form’) are double, have blush coloration blended with cream and a small amount of yellow in lower petals.  The other form (‘European’) has large distinctive guard petals of pink and the central mass of petaloides are blends of pink, cream and some yellow and the flower form would be considered a near bomb.  The European Form was distributed in the United States for a short while as a Lins seedling under the name ‘Pink Novelty’.  After exhaustive research of the two cultivar forms by numerous people, definitive confirmation of which cultivar is the “true” ‘Weatherball 90 has proven fruitless.  Conflicting information in commercial/historical/cultivar descriptions and lack of detail in the registration description are not sufficient to identify the cultivar Lins originally introduced under the name ‘Weatherball 90’. Either cultivar form is very much worth growing and are in considerable demand.