Pollinate only a few flowers to get the best seeds
 

Hello, everyone,

As the title suggest, I wanna ask if it's true that we should only pollinate one or two flowers to get the best seed?

Thank you 🙏

Not necessarily.

I have seen one plant simultaneously carrying seed capsules from several different crosses.

Also, considering the issues with getting crosses to “take”, sometimes the same cross is attempted on multiple flowers on the plant to increase the likelihood of seed production.

Welcome to the Orchid Board!

I'm not clear what you mean by "best seed." Plants tend to carry as many fruits as they can support. I don't think anybody has shown seed produced from just one fruit is more viable than seed produced when a plant carries many fruits.

When you are saying 'best seed', do you mean:

A. Getting a seed pod with viable seed?
B. Getting the highest quality plant?

First of all, I never pollinate a first time bloomer. In the past, I have killed young plants by setting a seed pod on them.

On Cattleyas I typically set only a single pod of each cross. On Vandas & Cymbidium, I usually try two (if both take, then I remove one of them).

If a plant is large enough, I might try multiple crosses. This past season, I had one Cattleya carry pods of three different crosses.

Finally, with the number of seeds produced by orchids (ranging from 2-300, up to two or three million in some Cattleyas), there is no need to produce more than a single pod.

However, the outcome of sexual (seed) reproduction is a total lottery, so you will need to grow a large number of plants to maturity to look for the high quality plant you are hoping for.