how do you hand pollinate plants with flowers?

how do you hand pollinate plants with flowers? and are there any that i shouldnt or cannot hand pollinate....and how do i do it? any info on this subject would be much appreciated!
-kay

I know you can do tomatoes and daylillies. Mom used to take a q-tip and just dab the pollen with it and then move it to the next one.

Somebody will be by to tell more.

Kwanjin

You can use a q-tip or a soft bristled paint brush. Dip into the pollen and gently tap it on to the other flower, plant, etc.
If you are try to hybridize you need to "bag" the specimen, I use baggies with small air holes.

when you say bag the 'specimen', do you mean the bloom or the entire plant?

All depends on the plant and what you want to do. Tomatoes self pollinate so to encourage pollination, some shake the plant (or hit it with a broom). I grow outside so do nothing.

Instructions on how to cross pollinate tomato plants is here:

http://www.kdcomm.net/~tomato/Tomato/xingtom.html

A little surgery is needed and yes, you bag the flowers, not the plants.

Leslie Woodriff, breeder of the Star Gazer lily, used a paintbrush he kept inside a square bottle to cross pollinate lilies. The inside of the bottle was coated with black ink. Woodriff would pull his paintbrush out, collect pollen from one lily, place it on the outside of the bottle (the black interior making the pollen more visible) then dab the pollen on other lilies.

How interesting to know this about my very favorite flower in the world. That would be the Star Gazer lily.

gessie...the history of Leslie Woodruff and his lillies is the first chapter in "Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers" by Amy Stewart. A terrific book. Just out last February. Takes you from a violet field in CA to growers in Ecuador, wholesalers in Amsterdam, importers in Miami and high end florists in NYC with the history of the business all along the way.

Woodruff was an odd character. Never made much money. Impoverished really. But Star Gazer alone made Dutch flower industry tens of millions. All Leslie cared about was his lilies. Stewart quotes other growers as saying they believe Woodruff's cultivars were better because he was so sloppy. No sterile lab and tweezers for him. Just his black bottle and paintbrush. If a lily could make it in Leslie's greenhouses, it could make it anywhere.

Thanks, David_Paul. The book goes on my wish list!

The reason you need to bag the flowers is to prevent the birds and bee's or any other flying/crawling insects from beating you to the pollination or you wont get the true to type plant seeds you hoped to get, it really is a tricky way to go, but then on saying that, we would not have such a wide variety of different flowers from all those plant breeders if no one tried this method, Good luck. WeeNel.