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SOME THOUGHTS ON HYBRIDIZING
(Courtesy of Ed Gilding) |
Why did I cross the plants I crossed to get the following cultivars?
A little background information would help to explain
why I did when I did it, I feel, and so let me begin
with my collection (and obsession) of Stapeliads. As
you already know I am attracted to the weird sort
plants that are not beautiful in the classical sense.
When I was 13 and starting to grow cacti and
succulents I attended a Cactus and Succulent meeting
for the first time. Each meeting, a lecturer would
give a presentation regarding anything from potting
Euphorbias to the metabolism of sugars in native
Hawaiian Portulacas. The first presentation I saw was
by Maureen Fitch and the pollination of Adeniums,
which are in the sister family of Apocynacae. I made
the connection between the structure of Adenium
flowers(as well as all other Apocynacae) and that of
the Stapeliads that I grew. Maybe I could adapt what
I learned about Adenium pollination and use it to
pollinate Stapeliads and other Asclepiads. Obsessed
would be a good way to describe how I felt about doing
this. I would spend hours trying to remove pollinaria
without bruising the flowers and trying to place them
into the right orientation so that I may pollinate the
Stapeliads. It never worked. There was something
missing from my method. My interest waned, and so did
my Stapeliad collection thanks to an excess of rain
one year.
Then came my obsession with Hoyas, which reignited my
plans to finally pollinate an Asclepiad. I decided to
work with the larger flowered species and realized
after reading "Vegetable Breeding for the Home
Gardener" by Carol Deppe that I should choose closely
related species for my first crosses. Reports in
Asklepios speculated that Asclepiads might be
self-infertile and that since many of the plants in
cultivation are genetically identical it would be
better to attempt an interspecies hybrid than to self
a plant in bloom.
My collection of Hoyas grew from the newly rooted
cuttings I got from Ted Green and people in the CSSH
into full sized plants with blooms. The first of the
"difficult" to bloom Eriostemma group that flowered
for me was 'MM'. The tiny two-foot long plant threw
out an umbel, I was very impressed. This plant
continued to bloom non-stop from that point on.
'Ruthie' is a cross between 'MM'(female) and a plant I
have/had labelled as ariadna (aka sussuela). H.
ariadna is a seasonal bloomer as my friend Peggy
pointed out to me and it tends to flower once in
spring and once in fall, the umbels also bloom once
with all of the flowers open simultaneously. After
blooming the umbel falls from the plant. H. 'MM'
blooms sequentially and repeatedly from the same
umbels, year round. I use the term 'rebloomer' for
this behavior. I was very impressed with the show of
burnt orange 2" blooms that H. ariadna puts on when it
flowers but disappointed that it did so only twice a
year. Why not cross a big but shy beauty with
something precocious I thought? This was my first
sucessful pollination of an Asclepiad. I was
thrilled! While pollinating the flowers I realized
what I was doing wrong and managed to move the
pollinaria where it should be, between the guide
rails. It turns out that I tried to control the
pollinaria too much. The follicle matured and I
collected 250+ seeds. All were carefully planted ans
only the sixteen fastest growing plants were saved.
The first to bloom was the cultivar released as
'Ruthie'.
I also realized that Eriostemma flowers may be used to
make lei(it is the correct plural for that word....no
's' as I found out myself) and that blooms that had
reflexed corollas were more likely to remain open
after picking due to their structure. H. ciliata is a
wonderful lei flower and I decided to use it as a
parent with the aim to producing a few floriferous
reflexed rebloomers. I crossed H. ciliata with H.
'MM'(female) and the plants that resulted were robust
plants that thrived in the sun. The most beautiful of
the seedlings that I saved has two tone yellow and
fruit-punch orange flowers that are strongly
reflexed. This is the seedling I have named
'Optimistic' partly because I was so optimistic about
what these seedlings had to offer and partly because
of a song by the band Radiohead (how teenage but
hey....)
I tried to cross more things with H. Ciliata to get a
wider variety that the seedlings of H. 'MM' and H.
ciliata. H. 'Blackstar' is a cross between H.
sussuela(female) and H. ciliata. In terms of flower
color and form these seedlings showed great variation
for a cross between two species. It is troublesome to
propagate because the stems are very succulent and so
rot sets in easily, much like H. imperialis. This
cultivar is not one of my faves, and neither is H.
'Girlie' which is a cross of 'Ruthie'(female) with H.
ciliata. H. 'Girlie' is like a larger flowered, more
floriferous version of H. 'Optimistic'.
H. lauterbachii arrived in the Hoya circles about
1998-1997 and caused a stir with American collectors
first started to bloom the plants collected from PNG.
Lei flowers are great but what about corsage flowers?
H. laterbachii opened up this possibility. There are
two drawbacks to H. lauterbachii however for its use
in a corsage. First, the plant flowers once, maybe
twice a year and secondly the flowers stink of baby
vomit. Just for kicks I decided to cross H.
lauterbachii with the REAL H. coronaria (lowland
form....female parent) to see if that would get rid of
the awful smell and what would win out, the cupped
flower form or the reflexed flower form. H. coronaria
is a species that has a pleasant night-time scent that
I was hoping would be conferred to the offspring. The
first seedling to bloom was named 'Monette' after my
mother. The blooms of this cultivar are heavy and
somewhat pubescent on the interior. The plant is a
rebloomer and the blooms are bowl shaped with reflexed
lobes. A second reblooming seedling was chosen and
called 'Margaret' (same grandmother as Girlie but this
plant is better =)) with pastel pink and green radar
dish like flowers. Both have no vomit odor (YAY).
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