Re: Re: If you could ignore hybridizing barriers...(question)

thomas silvers <tesilvers@yahoo.com> wrote:
  Hello Christian,
I look forward to seeing the results of your flattie
work. I think that they're really neat irises and I've
always wanted to work with them too. I had to decide
to leave those plans to someone else for now; I just
have too many plans already. You have to draw the line
somewhere I guess.
But, PLEASE don't let me discourage anything you might
have been planning on trying. Actually, I think
there's a whole lot more possible [as far as
hybridizing goes] than we all think we know. I'm
actually going to try some pretty far-out experiments
myself. I know that people have said repeatedly, that
bearded and beardless won't cross. But wouldn't it be
fun, for one of us adventurous hardheads, to prove all
the naysayers wrong. 
  ------------It is now recognized that some wide crosses actually do start hybrid embryoes, which then reject the paternal DNA in some way.  So, for example, a domestic  sunflower, pollinated with the winter-hardy perennial sunlower Helianthus mollis, gave seedlings with 96% domestic DNA and 4% H. mollis DNA.  The difference between the hybrid and it's mother was hardly noticable.  I grew out a sample of that, too,  both the selfed and the hybrid seeds.
  I didn't make that cross, though.
  But there is now a long list of such partial hybrids proven by looking at the DNA.
  So if you feel like pollinating, do it.
  
People said for many years that corn/maize wouldn't
cross with one of it's relatively close relatives, a
grass called Tripsacum. Crosses had been tried and
never been successful.
Then one day a determined person, tried the cross (yet
again) with a certain strain of popcorn, that just
happened to be more compatible (with Tripsacum) than
most corns. Now it's fairly standard procedure to
cross corn and Tripsacum, you just have to be sure to
start with a compatible strain of corn.
  ------I've done done that cross myself, back when I was hired to breed a winter-hardy periannial corn.  Tripsicum is a native perennial prairie grass here in Kansas.  The cross doesn't even require embryo culture.  Though the F1 seed has no endosperm to feed the embryo.  So the embryo must have the seedcoat peeled of and the embryo set right-side-up in moist soil.

Who knows... maybe there is a particular bearded iris
or beardless iris that would just be cooperative
enough to allow that supposed barrier
(bearded/beardless) to be breached. One thing is for
sure, if it exists, we'll never find it, without
continued trying.
  -----I. tectorum is concidered beardless, though the crest has some resemblence to a beard.  And it sometimes crosses with bearded iris.  Would another beardless iris cross with bearded?  Not often.  That much we know.
  But would 1 in a thousand, if we used embryo culture?  We don't know.  Maybe it would be a total waste of a lot of time. Maybe even if you got such a cross, you might look at it and see you have wasted your time.
   
  

I know that I've personally experienced considerable
difficulty in getting hybrids between bearded and Iris
tectorum. My determination to continue trying crosses
came largely from knowing that it really was possible
[because of the existence of the iris 'Paltec']. If
noone had ever done it before, I could have easily
concluded that it wasn't possible, after multiple
failed attempts. 
  ------Exactly.

So, go ahead and try some long shots along with your
more conventional stuff.
Good luck, Tom
  ----------- I remember what one of my professors, Dr. Carl Clayberg, said.  "If you don't have space, try wider crosses.  Then you won't fill up your space so fast."
  One way to look at it.
  Walter
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