Re: Stigma-Ovary distances explained (sort of)

Barry Meyers-Rice (barry@as.arizona.edu)
Tue, 23 Nov 93 16:59:14 MST

>understand that,in some of these cases, the tube grows too
>long and becomes kinked so that fertilization does not occur.

>Rob Sacilotto has used this philosophy successfully to
>form hybrids between Sarraceniae whose flowers were of
>very different sizes.

>Barry - have you had any experience with this effect?

Tom:

Interesting phenomenon, and not one I had heard about before. I
just looked at my files wi/breeding records and see that I have
successfully made several crosses involving species with a large
disparity in flower sizes. For example, sticking with crosses between
_S.rubra rubra_ (which has just about the smallest flowers) and species
with very large flowers, I see I've made...

_S.leucophylla X rubra rubra_
_S.alata X rubra rubra_
_S.rubra rubra X flava_

In these three cases, I've listed the maternal parent first. So,
at least it is *possible* to make crosses in both directions with flowers
of very different sizes. I do suppose I could gather all the data from my
notebooks which includes the occasional cross that doesn't work, and try
to fit the measured success rate of an attempted cross with some flower
size difference parameter like (l1-l2)/l1 where l1,l2 are flower sizes,
but I'm not going to. Even if I had the desire, 5 years of making 20
crosses a year (with a bias towards making pure-species crosses) does not
a database make!

Rob Sacilotto is, I gather, an experienced grower. If he thinks this is
important, it may be. On the other hand, it may just be an effect he
thinks is important but is actually irrelevant here. I was just telling
William L (on the net) that I think that while you can store Sarr seed
in the fridge dry, once you get them wet you should keep them wet until
germination. I stick to this rule, and it sounds good, but I have no
data to prove it! So I'll just sit here, surrounded by my untested and
unverified poorly developed theories, and grow plants.

Complacent and Lazy in the Desert