Re: Re: HYB: self incompatibility

It's raining again as I write this. It started at the beginning of bloom season and we've only had a few rain-free days since -- two days being the longest stretch. The bees weren't having any better luck than I in making crosses until the last few days of bloom -- then they went wild. I had to shoo them away as I worked the flowers. All in all, though, they seem to have good taste. I have so few successful crosses this year that I'm going to let the bee pods on important flowers mature and will probably plant them. It's also time to construct new beds for this year's seedlings, though I'm tempted to use the wood to build an ark. -- Griff
----- Original Message ----- From: "Linda Mann" <lmann@lock-net.com> 
To: <iris@hort.net>
Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2009 2:59 PM
Subject: [iris] Re: HYB: self incompatibility



Interesting.
Because successful crosses here are hard to come by a lot of years, I've saved and planted quite a few bee pods.
Some have been on cultivars that haven't cooperated by producing pollen, so those are clearly not selfs.
Some have been on cultivars where I attempted crosses with no luck & seedlings have looked suspiciously like they came from the added pollen. The HELEN COLLINGWOOD X bee, with attempted ROMANTIC EVENING pollen on nearby but earlier blooms, sure look like they are HC X RE. I assumed the little pollen scavengers moved on to the next bloom, taking some pollen with them. Carefully sealed in a little plastic container to keep it dry and viable ;-)
Other bee babies have been different enough from known parent and grandparents that I've assumed somebody else donated the pollen - one that comes to mind is a group of seedlings from one of the cream (IMM X CSONG) seedlings - a dark red, some pastel browns with form and "presence" not particularly reminiscent of the parent. I guess they <could> be selfed, but seems unlikely - I'd expect mostly white seedlings from a self of this one or its sibs. ?
Another batch of bee babies from the lavender self (IMM X CSONG) probably are selfed, now that I think about it - they've all been white or pale yellow, & other traits of stalk, form etc could easily be a 're-mix' of grandparent genes. 

Ridiculously robust and not a rebloomer among them.

Linda Mann
TN

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