Tips for the hybridizer

The mechanics of hybridizing are simple, as I have shown in the chapters on special plants. Apply the powdery pollen from one plant (the staminate or male parent) to another, the mother or pistilate parent. The plant receiving the pollen will (if the pollination is successful) be the seed-bearing parent.

For your first work in plant breeding, you will probably select closely related plants, merely crossing them for a change in flower color or foliage form. As you advance, however, you may go a step further and select plants that are not so closely related. Here you must be prepared for meager success at the outset and perhaps for quite a while, but if you do develop intergeneric crosses, you generally have something very new indeed in the plant world.

Some flowers have the ability to self-pollinate. To safeguard against this, prepare your seed-bearing parent by cutting off petals and pollen-bearing anthers-the process known as emasculation. For success, you should know when the stigma is ready to receive the pollen. In African violets the signal is the appearance of a tiny white blob on the tip of the stigma; in gloxinias the stigma spreads to reveal an opening. In rechsteinerias and many other flowers, the pistil elongates, reaching out over the petals and almost invariably showing a white tip. Many flowers have a drop of sticky substance on the stigma when they are ready for pollination. In amaryllis, the pistil elongates and divides into three parts.

If possible, choose a sunny day for pollinating-especially with African violets: you will find that the pollen becomes more powdery and easier to handle.

If you are working on special crosses, bag the pollinated pistil with cellophane or slip a large soda straw over it and bend the end of it shut. This will avoid introducing foreign pollen carried by insects or brushed on with your hand as you water or handle plants.

With special crosses, it is important to keep records. Tag the pollinated flowers with a slip of paper (or use a stationary tag) on which you have detailed the following information: names of seed and pollen parents, date of pollination. If you plan much plant breeding, enter these data in a record book. Such records are valuable, and you will surely need them if you register or sell the offspring of a cross.

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