Shotgun hybridizing Catasetinae
 

I figured I'd share my Catasetinae hybridizing project that I've been working on for the last couple months. Hopefully some will find it interesting and this can serve as a record for me down the line. I've been calling my method of trying to produce hybrids by germinating them on trees around my house shotgun hybridizing because it's not very precise. I'll never know for sure what the parents are because seeds from all sorts of combinations get spread everywhere and anywhere I think they might germinate.

For years I've kind of ignored the C. maculatum I came across, the only native Catasetum in Costa Rica, because I didn't find them very interesting. They are very common in most areas of the country and I didn't really like the flowers too much. Then about a year or two ago I figured out that there are other orchids from the Catasetinae subtribe that have far showier flowers when I found some Mormodes blooming on a fence post on the side of the road. In a matter of a few months I accumulated a handful of them and pollinated a few flowers. I spread the resulting seeds on any surface I thought the might germinate on. Turns out they germinate really well on the cut ends of live fence posts.
When one of my C. maculatum produced some female flowers a few months ago I happened to be visiting an orchid nursery and the owner had a bunch of plants he imported from Sunset Valley Orchids. He had some nice hybrid male flowers in bloom and bud so I bought two and pollinated my C. maculatum with pollen from one of them (the other dropped it's buds before they opened) The seed pods have been developing nicely.
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Now that C. maculatum are in another blooming period I went to Maya Orchids again and repeated the same process with this C. saccatum.
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In addition, the hybrid Catasetum that I bought with male flowers a few months ago produced a female flower last week. I pollinated it and a couple C. maculatum with Galeandra arundinis pollen.
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It looks like it might produce seed.
I also tried trimming the cap off the Catasetum flowers when pollinating them on one plant to see if it would affect pod development any.
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It makes pollinating easier and keeps the bees from pollinating them with other pollen. SO far it seems like it doesn't have any negative effects.
I still have one more maculatum that will bloom soon that I plan to pollinate with a hybrid Catasetum
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I've also finally got a Galeandra pollinated with Catasetum to start to develop a pod. I'd tried a bunch of times in the last month and they all aborted nearly immediately till this one.
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Also some Cynoches are going to be blooming soon and I hope to make some interesting crosses with them too.
Hopefully in about 2 years I'll have some hybrid flowers to show for my efforts.

In my opinion, you really need to be careful to know the crosses. You might run across something really spectacular, then not know what it was to remake it.

i am here for the experiment and i love the pics of them growing on things outside.

i would agree with Ray that the more limited you can be in the ID the better down the road if you are successful

I agree with you that it would be great. But it's not practically feasible when sowing your seeds outdoors. At least not how I do it. I spread the seed all over my property in hopes that some will find a suitable spot to germinate and grow. If I wanted to know what the parentage of the crosses are for sure I would have to limit my self to no more than one cross per year or two for any hybrids that might be able to be confused with each other. As it stands, I'll be happy to get any decent looking hybrids that other people might be interested in getting divisions of. If I get anything spectacular and someone wants to recreate it they will have to deal with a list of possible crosses that created it. This is just for fun in the end and I don't expect to be able to register anything unless the parentage is fairly obvious (which with some of my crosses it should be).

dude, i wish i could do that! and while the purist in me agrees with rays comment, the anarchist/capitalist in me says you could have some very special, sought after hybrids of unknown parentage, but clear place of origin. sort of special maybe in its own way....certainly for you and for us watching from afar. keep up the johny orchidseeding!!🎋

edit...sorry if our non american friends didn’t get that reference. google johny appleseed

I think that is super interesting and cool. So inspiring. :-)

I'm making a set of videos and posting on Youtube about germinating Catasetinae ex-vitro. If anyone is interested, I just posted the first one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oww9GvVExQU .
Sorry about the poor camera work. First time making a video.

Germinating Catasetinae ex-vitro video part 2
 

Here's the second video about getting Catasetinae to germinate in an open air environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnNFbjBEM_s

How I've started to repot my Catasetinae and showing some of my grow area.
 

Here's a video about how I've been repotting my Catasetinae in short sections of wood that has started to decay. Also I show a bit of my grow area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0sGRDs3i00

Cool! I just subscribed.