I have all three of those (Sunset Celebration, Tahitian Sunset and Valencia). Valencia is my fav of the three, but it is slow to establish, as has been said. But once established, it has enormous very fragrant blooms of a really unique gold-peach color. It's also slow to repeat, but oh so worth the wait. Sunset Celebration is kinda blah, normal, as roses go. Nothing too exciting about it. Nice flower for cutting and it holds indoors. But not too much in the scent department. I tried to replace it once with a rose called Scent-sation, which is the same color but supposedly fragrant. NOT! Don't go there. Scent-sation is a disease magnet with much smaller flowers than Sunset Celebration and also, no fragrance in it that I can detect. Why someone had the nerve to call it "Scent-sation" is beyond me. Tahitian Sunset is also okay, but the form of the flower is a little loosey goosey for my taste (and actually I think they blow faster than Sunstruck flowers). Sunset Celebration has more hybrid tea-ish form, while Tahitian Sunset acts more like a floribunda. Tahitian Sunset is also a quick repeater, but I don't consider it a cutting rose for bouquets. It's more of a garden color splash, mostly orange. I haven't had terrible disease issues with any of the three, but I do spray reasonably regularly. Kathy

Aggie, I agree about the silver spots. I always know it's a GF on the wing because the spots just glimmer in the sunlight. One of the easiest to ID on the fly, IMHO. Congrats on your GFs! MissSherry, I'm gonna have to pay more attention to the GF cats. I haven't noticed any variation in the markings, but I haven't really looked for them either. The caerulea is completely defoliated so they're going to have to use the P. 'Incense' now, and they're still flying around, mating, laying eggs, etc. Just the 'Incense' has so many predators on it, I see few cats that grow beyond the 3rd instar. The ones that do make it to the later instars seem to be "safer" (or is it my imagination?) from predation than the little ones. Susan

There is a fruit nursery on Pine Island called the treehouse nursery. They have an excellent variety of tropicals for sale, especially mangos and lychee. I have purchased all of my mango trees there except my mallika which I found at lowes. It had scale and I got that tree for $4. One spray with neem oil cleaned it right up. It was 8ft and full on bloom prior to this years freeze. It lived but is much smaller now. That tree had the Pine Island Nursery tag on it. The pine island nursery is on Pine Island rd in Homestead. I have been to that nursery as well. I was not as impressed with them as The treehouse. Too commercial. The treehouse nursery has a fruit stand opened June - at least August. It is not at the nursery but on the way. That is where I have found the different varieties of fruit. There are a couple of other stands that people have at there house as well. The key is to get there very early when they open. There are alot of people that get their early to get there favorite mangos as well. Steve and Jessie are the most knowlegeable. I did call Steve to see what varities they had and they had a very poor year for mangos. The asian varieties did the best. They have nam doc mai, florigon, bram kai meu, po pyu kalay, mun khun si, and so on. They also have the Kent and Tommy Atkins, although they say Tommy Atkins are best to through at cars. I plan on going the next two weekends so Ill post what I find in a couple weeks. They did say they had 4 varieties of lychee.

Tequila Sunrise and Pretty-N-Pink are maybe in the process of being registered. Still Ten English pounds is a lot of moular to some (and me). Tequila Sunrise is lovely. Pretty-N-Pink has a minor fault only visible to Tolumnia purists. Had a look at Orchidom previously and was impressed. Closer to home and you do not have to worry so much about the guardians of the gates. You might have to be careful with âÂÂclonesâÂÂ, are they talking about Mericlones which are usually more expensive than seedlings. The other big advantage is growing conditions. The Caribbean is probably Tolumnia Heaven. Three clones of Tolu. Alyshia showing the variation you sometimes get from the one compot of seedlings which in this case means produced from seed. The crossing is Shannon Elizabeth x Sizzler. Sizzler was registered by Robert Perreira. Tracking the ancestors of a cross will usually find an ancestor registered by Perreira or Moir. Thank you gentlemen! This post was edited by arthurm on Mon, Jun 30, 14 at 15:32