Burwoodclivianursery.com.au is an Australian mail order nursery selling clivia seedlings
Title
Burwood Clivia Nursery
Description
Maintaining the integrity of commercially available Clivia seedlings
Even as perennials, Clivia seedlings are at present (and probably will remain) relatively expensive to buy. In addition, there is the long wait (of up to 5 years for a 1 year old seedling) for a flower. This creates a situation where an unscrupulous person can use misleading attractive images to pass off seedlings grown from cheap inferior seed. This is presently occurring in Japan as well as in Australia, and can be expected to continue as long as the public demand for Clivias grows.
"The only way to be completely certain of a Clivia's (or other plant's) colour etc, is to buy an offset (sucker) of a known cultivar. Offsets, of course, are genetically identical to the parents. However, many desirable Clivia plants produce few, if any offsets, so that most Clivia propagation is by seed.
"Most of the world's Clivia breeders now post coloured images of seed parents on their website, usually without comment. The beginning Clivia grower reasonably assumes that, as with most other 'flowers', the ensuing Clivia seedlings will have flowers which are some mixture of the parental flowers shown. In practice, this, in fact often happens. But on other occasions, it does not happen at all, and for several reasons:
