Were it not for the University of Minnesota's cold-hardy breeding program, living in Minnesota would be a lot less colorful, that's for certain.
According to Assistant Professor Seth Wannemuehler, who was recently named head of the Woody Ornamental Plant Breeding & Genetics program, "The public demands beautiful flowering shrubs."
Among those flowering shrubs are azaleas, and the University of Minnesota has been particularly successful in bringing the full bouquet of colors to the clamoring Minnesota masses, introducing 14 azalea varieties.
"There wasn't anything like cold-hardy azaleas in the north back in the 1950s," says Wannemuehler. "We have some native ones here and there, but they don't quite put on the show that Minnesotans wanted. We didn't have big, beautiful, colorful plants."
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