Looking for a specific Gladiolas

March 7, 2010 1:15 PM

A long shot, but looking for a specific Gladiolas, and not even sure how to go about looking for it.

My grandmother was born in Medicine Hat, Alberta Canada in 1926. The nurse/midwife that assisted with her birth cultivated Gladiolas.

It was her habit, at the time, that when she produced a new kind of Gladiolas (bred them? I'm really not sure of the terminology), she would name it after a child she helped birth. She named one after my grandmother, Corrine. I would like to find this flower, or any information surrounding it if possible.

The facts:

-My grandmothers name is Corrine
-My grandmothers parents were Lena and John Slemko
-The nurse was Mrs Walker
-Mrs Walker had two sons, Ross and Alfred (who was a boxer)
-She may/may not have had a daughter
-Mr Walker worked for the CPR

Other spellings of Corrine would be acceptable. Many people incorrectly spell it.

I have no idea if Mrs Walker registered the gladiolas, or whatever one has to do to get it officially recognized. The flower may not have gone farther than her garden, but I would like to find out!

I'm sure all of this is a long shot, but I would love to find out more information about it. The best possible outcome for me would be to find the flower and give it to my grandmother as a gift, but besides that, any information about it would be very interesting to me.

posted by billy_the_punk to Home & Garden (4 answers total)

You should MeMail St. Alia of the Bunnies (MeFite). She works at a flower shop and knows her stuff on this subject.
posted by fourcheesemac at 1:38 PM on March 7, 2010

Gladioli, like daylilies, are an amateur breeder's paradise. I have a friend who knows a daylily breeder and gets all the discarded crosses and abandoned cultivars; there are dozens every year. So I don't think the odds of finding the plant are very high. I went to "Old House Gardens" website; they raise heirloom cultivars, and didn't see anything like 'Corrine'.

There is a North American Gladiolus Council (http://www.gladworld.org/societyinfo.htm) which lists a couple Canadian societies including:
Canadian Gladiolus Society
Jack L Hartwell, Sec.
2947 Bellwood Drive
Newcastle, ON
Canada L1C 1L9
[phone]
[e-mail]

I have always found these societies to be very friendly and helpful when I've needed to track down the parentage of a cultivar. Good luck!
posted by acrasis at 1:53 PM on March 7, 2010

have you tried contacting agencies local to the community of origin? If the variety never went into commercial production, it may not have spread very far, and it would seem to me your local horticultural appreciation societies/botanical sites/garden resources would have the best bet of maybe having preserved a specimen or two.
posted by Ys at 7:08 PM on March 7, 2010

Best answer: I would try to find relatives of the glad breeder. It's possible she gave plants to her children or neighbors. The chances of them remembering the name she gave a particular flower is slimmer. You're just going to have to physically get as close to the source as you can on this, because those are the people most likely to have any of these breeding experiments.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:48 PM on March 8, 2010