Lilies: Lilies a year from seed in flower Part 2, 1 by pardalinum

pardalinum wrote:
Oh goodie, Magnolia has indeed crossed over! Hey mags, heres what you need to do: this winter spend some time with a pencil and a bunch of little squares of foil. Form the caps over the end of the pencil, toss them all into a cup and voila! you're good to go next year. It's what I call my cup o' caps!

The foil comes off with the stigma when it drops off. So it will fall into your garden under the lily. You want to use foil if you want to be very sure of the cross. I do this on seeds I donate to NALS. Or if I don't do it but still want to donate, in all fairness to the buyers I will describe it as open pollinated. Sometimes in the morning before I go to work, I will cap up a stigma on a lily that is just starting to open and also remove the stamens for later use. At this time the pollen has not been released yet. I'll pollinate and recap in the next day or two.

I store the anthers in labeled microcentrifuge tubes and use the whole anther when I pollinate. Then I discard it. I know, its kind of wasteful.

Well, this is a short lesson on how I do it.