Hidden Valley Hibiscus Forum

Hi all,

I have been growing hibiscus for a long time and i thought it was time to try to cross a few.  the following images are crosses, labeled as such. in the first three, moonstruck is the pod parent, crossed with black dream

the last pod is a cross between june's joy and rockets red glare, glare being the pod parent.

also note how i wrap the pod in gauze to keep the seeds from falling all over the floor,.

by the looks of the pods, the seeds might be viable, what are your thoughts, charlie.

louis

(http://www.lousviews.com/web/hib-pods/pod-1.jpg)


(http://www.lousviews.com/web/hib-pods/pod-2.jpg)


(http://www.lousviews.com/web/hib-pods/pod-3.jpg)


(http://www.lousviews.com/web/hib-pods/pod-wrap-1.jpg)

Oh yeah, you have some seeds well on the way!  Nice job.

Charlie

Louis, what do you use as a camera?  Lens??  nice macros!

hi kristen,

i use my pocket cam, its a canon g-10. great for macros.

thanks,

louis

Could someone tell me please what would happen if you took the pollen of a bloom and placed it on the pads of the same bloom [not actualy doing a cross], would you get viable seeds, and if you did what would likely come, say for example from Thanksgiving.

Louis I have been following your seed pods right the way through to blooming with interest and have a couple of questions.

Do pods grow at different speeds, mine seems to have stopped, its still looking healthy but I now have 2 others that have nearly caught it up in size and they where a week behind.

Now more importantly, out of all the seedlings you grew what was the height of the average bush before blooming.

Hello David,

I just happen to hear you jingle me :)

I have found that pods ripen at different times but the average is about 45 days.

On the height of the bushes: I did not trim or prune any of my new seedlings. I wanted to see the bloom before I trained the bush. The average height before they bloom is from 2 to 4 feet. I have some seedlings from a cross between tigerama and june’s joy that are only about 2 feet and have buds. This should be an interesting plant.

Louis

That's called a "self cross," David, and it almost never works. Cindy's Heart is one of the few successful self crosses we have - it's a High Voltage self cross.

The self cross is the way you can tell if a hibiscus is a true native "species" plant though. If a self cross produces a genetically identical baby, then the plant is a true species. If a self cross produces a new plant with a different flower, it's not a species, it's a hybrid. So that's the test we use for the different species plants we have, like H. rosa-sinensis and H. liliiflorus.

Thanks Cindy, the reason I asked was I actualy saw this huge bee in the bloom of Thanksgiving 2 days ago and when I examined I could see loads of pollen on the pads, I dont know why but bees here seem very  interested in Thanksgiving much more than any other of my cv's. What was  a bit strange and something I have never seen before was yesterday this same bloom [still open on its second day] was sort of ejected from the cv. Thanksgiving is always growing seed pods and I usually just cut them off, maybe I should see if it develops.