Dracula erythrocodon (aka Dracula sodiroi ssp erythrocodon) seed pod

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Just in case anybody wanted to know what the seed pod on a Dracula orchid might look like, here it is. This is the result of a self pollination effort:

[naoki]

Cool, Philip! If you end up with some extra, are you interested in trading some seeds?

[Tindomul]

Very nice. I assume your going to try and culture the seeds, if so would you mind documenting the process????

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by naoki

Cool, Philip! If you end up with some extra, are you interested in trading some seeds?

I have another flower coming around, I will try to self pollinate this next one when it blooms.

Originally Posted by Tindomul

Very nice. I assume your going to try and culture the seeds, if so would you mind documenting the process????

I don't have the means to sow them from seed. This house is a fungal breeding ground. I cannot do home sowing here, everything will get contaminated without a carefully designed clean room with professional equipment. That's how bad it is. Otherwise I would document it. Undertaking a project like this will be expensive and would have to be done over a period of years. I don't have that luxury at the moment. It makes more sense to send it to a lab.

I will be sending them to a lab, and I will be providing some instructions to them, and hopefully they can try out a few of the things I would like to have done, and see if we can get results. I have some ideas as to how I'd like to sow them.

[Tindomul]

Originally Posted by King_of_orchid_growing:)

I have another flower coming around, I will try to self pollinate this next one when it blooms.

It makes more sense to send it to a lab.

I will be sending them to a lab, and I will be providing some instructions to them, and hopefully they can try out a few of the things I would like to have done, and see if we can get results. I have some ideas as to how I'd like to sow them.

Sorry to be annoying but this leads to more questions.
Are you thinking of varying the type of growing medium? I thought that once you sent it in to a lab, they did whatever they thought was best. I think its great that you can give them pointers/requests etc....

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

No problems.

I ask if they've had prior experience with particular orchids. If they don't, but are willing to help me out, I try to work with them. Not every lab will be willing to do this.

They get my perspective on things, and I hear them out and I get their perspective on things. There's usually a middle ground. I also reassure them that I will not get upset if things don't go as planned in the seed sowing process.

This is what I've done with a few orchid seeds I've had a lab help me sow that they had no prior experience with and very few people in the world wanted to even work on because of the reputation a particular genus of orchids had garnered in the hobby. The results have been fairly decent. I'm very happy with what has been reported to me by the lab, and I'm very happy with the seedlings I've received. I wish more advances can be achieved with the development of the seedlings in-vitro, but for the time being, I consider it steps in the right direction.

As a side note, I'm currently trying to develop a reliable method to harden the seedlings of these orchids off so that a decent number of plants can survive until maturity. The lab did their part. Now it's up to me to figure it out as a grower.

As a grower, I did my research, and if there're orchids that haven't been successfully sown yet, I offer whatever I know to the lab and hope for the best.

This is the ideal relationship between the lab and hobbyists/professional breeders.

As for growing medium, the lab has a set of media they work with. They never ever just work with only one kind. I find out what the choices are, I ask if they can possibly use a particular media, and I ask if they can change the formulation or concentration of the media and how.

Sometimes I do the legwork and help them out too.

This is why it's not always good to approach matters where few people dare to tread or of uncharted territory with the "I am 'king'/'queen', it's my way or the highway.", or the "It's my lab, and I know best. So you be a good grower and mind your own business growing your orchids while I mind mine." mentality, or whatever variation of this is out there. Things don't get done with these frames of mind.

If I know certain things aren't working, I'm not going to be a lemming and follow the crowd. I'm going to be like Thomas Alva Edison and others like him who dares to change things up to find a real solution to a problem/puzzle.

[No-Pro-mwa]

Good luck. Cross the next one with a Masevallia. Well I just think there should be more crosses of them, just my suggestion. Not trying to tell you what to do.