Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Langenbuscher Garten x Wildfire, 1 by EricKnight

EricKnight wrote:
For those of you who might be trying this, I have shared a few of my methods with many people and almost all have reported back that the pods drop on this type of cross within 2 months. I have chosen to share this here as I have some idea's to share for those of you who get excited by the improbable.

1st. Pollen from less compatible species may in fact abort, but seeds do develop. The pod aborts however. How do we rectify this? The answer, I believe is to allow just a few grains of less improbable pollen from the arborea group to germinate and grow in the style of an aurea group without the competition of compatible pollen. You can then add just enough compatible pollen to allow the pod to develop and thus keep the pod from aborting. The style remains receptive even 24 hours after pollinating, but I will admit that I often cut the style back a bit as well to pollinate closer to the ovary for the second pollination.

2nd. A different approach is to mix your pollen and make serial dilutions or even 1 to 1 ratios of aurea and arborea group respectfully. When using this method you will want to use significantly less pollen then you would normally for a pollination. I use a small needle dipped into the pollen and then place just the tip of it onto the stigma or cut style surface. I am still experimenting with this method and unfortunately I am losing a lot of seed pods from compatible crosses as I have very young plants over here that I am working with in a cold environment compared to say Georgia, Florida, etc. that I am used to. Next year, I have higher hopes though as I will be able to start crossing in April-May time frame with much larger more mature specimens. Again, allow your pollen to germinate for several hours to 24 hours. Then pollinate once again with either your 1 to 1 mixture or a pure pollen. Unfortunately, you will have to grow out all of the resulting seed to determine if any new phenotypes exist. I don't want to get anyones hopes up with these methods, but I will point out that even if a single person gets lucky and has a seed from an impossible cross that is also semi-fertile we may be able to breed new traits and get different phenotypes to arise than would be possible with either group of Brugmansia.