HYB: pod success

Results of this year's attempts at hybridizing TBs:
55 pods or partial pods out of about 300 attempts (not counted yet).

Some of these are rotting in the constant rain, but that's a separate
issue from getting them to take.  Many of these were experiments with
what was available, not crosses I really want.  I was just taking
advantage of the unusually excellent bloom season to try to learn.
About a dozen of these are crosses I wanted.  Still not a high success
rate, but a bit of an improvement.

All of these successes occurred when temperatures were between 63 and
81oF; relative humidity between 43 and 90%.  I haven't looked at details
yet - that's the range for the days in which successful crosses were
made.  I'll report actual temperatures and humidities at the time of
successful crosses after I finish summarizing.

There were two peaks in successes - April 27 (11 successes) and May 12
(5 successes).

The first TB crosses were attempted April 19.  I think most of these
were from stored pollen.  None of the pollen stored from the previous
spring gave pods, although some stored from fall rebloom did.  As fresh
pollen became available, I started getting pods to set.

Some crosses were successful on days when it rained, few or none on
successive rainy days.  Just for the experiment, I was attempting
crosses between showers if I could find stigmas that didn't have water
droplets on them.

It rained every day from May 4 through May 7 - only two crosses took
during that time, and it took several days for good pollen to start
forming again after the rain stopped.

Many crosses were made on blooms that had not yet opened on their own.
I didn't take notes on which ones these were, but notice there are more
partial pods than in past years.

Hope this is somewhat useful to other beginners.

After paying a lot more attention to what the plants look like as I'm
making crosses, I'm getting a better feel for what kind of health/vigor
they have to have in order to set pods.  Not much to work with.  Plants
in the ridgetop clay garden are much healthier and more willing to set
pods/produce pollen.  Nothing like a 2 mile roundtrip hike through the
woods to get fertile pollen!

Pollen is still a bit of a mystery - some really pathetic looking plants
produced a lot of viable pollen this year.  FOREIGN KNIGHT is about as
close to death as any blooming cultivar I grow - one tiny, somewhat
unhealthy looking blade of green on a finger sized rhizome is all that
is left now.  The stalk that it put up was really ratty looking -
pathetic, undersized, only two blooms.  I couldn't believe it produced
any pollen.  I will kill lots of seedlings from those crosses, but the
ones that live should be interesting.

--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society <http://www.korrnet.org/etis>
American Iris Society web site <http://www.irises.org>
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