I tried breeding some odd alocasias this season already. So far is a pic of borneo giant crossed with my hybrid Brian Williams. Also broneo giant pollen put on a new hybrid not yet named between frydek and macrorrhiza. I hope they take as it could produce some great new landscape plants.
here is the borneo flower hopeing for a take.
Brian-
Here is an ignorant question (or two).
How can you tell if the borneo flower does take? Do the green nodule-looking looking things (I am feeling very techical today) turn a different color? Do they get larger?
If they do take, how do you collect them and germinate them.
ROX
Well I am not sure if they took yet. If it does the green parts are the female area they will swell up and turn a red to orange color. They will become berries and once fully mature they will rippen up and easily fall off. In nature usually eaten by birds or other animals and spread around. Once they are ready to come off I collect them squeeze 1 to 3 seeds out of the berries and clean them off in water. After this they go into a humidity chamber to germinate. Once this is all done it takes me about 1 to 2 seasons to get them fully grown. So in most cases it can take me 3 years to get a plant out of these seeds. But this is possibly the only real way to get something completely new and interesting. You can get sports by chance but in most cases they are genetically very similar to the original plant. With breeding you get something completely new a combination of both genetics of two different plants. As I usually describe it. Its about like breeding dogs most people under stand the concept of breeding dogs and how in one litter not all the puppies are the same. This is the same with breeding plants.
Thanks for the great explanation!
ROX
