Trying to learn how to pollinate phals
 

Hi everyone, I've read a lot of articles and posts about pollinating phaleanopsis, but I'm not sure I'm understanding it correctly.

When I look at the column of a flower, there is a white cap and when I remove the white cap, there are two yellow balls. Do I need to dissect one of the balls to find the pollin or can I just take one of the balls and shove it into the v-shaped apparatus on the lip of a flower on another plant? Also, people talk about getting it to stick but I have not encountered any sticky substances either on the yellow ball or on the flower lip.

Detailed info with photos/diagrams would be apprechiated. Thanks.

Hi

The yellow balls is the pollina, Take those balls and put them on the stigma (the sticky mark on the column not the lip) and you have pollinated you phal. Just wait and have some luck!

Unfortunate I do not have any pictures

I did a google image search using "pollinating phalaenopsis" and on the second page of results I found a couple image links. Try it and see if that helps.

jeanne

Thanks that was a great idea. I found some good images. I totally didn't realize there was an upside-down cup on the underside of the column, but now that I look at my flowers I see it! I'm assuming it's best not to remove the anther cap on the pod parent? And also, I have a brand new flower just opened which I would like to use as the father, but the flowers on the plant i would like to be the mother are about a week old. Do you think they are too old?

What are the names of the parents? I think I remember hearing that Phal. bellina does not pollinate well when fresh (I hope I'm getting that right, can't remember if it was being used as pollen or pod parent, I think pod...). In other species and hybrids, in my very limited hobbyist experience, I don't think your flowers are too old, perhaps a little young? As flowers can last for three months or so, you have time, let the pollen mature for a couple days. Someone with more experience will perhaps contradict me, and we both will learn.

Gwen,

You do want to remove the pollinia/anther cap from the pod parent, otherwise you stand a good chance of self pollinating your new hybrid. Also, Phalaephila's advice is good about letting the flowers mature a bit before pollinating them, I would say at least a couple of weeks. :) I hope this is helpful to you.

Sounds great! thanks so much phalaephila and dgenovese! I plan on using Daniella Ter Laak as the pollen parent and Brother Love King "De Leon's Exotic" as the pod parent. Daniella is a clear yellow with very nicely shaped largish flowers and De Leon's Exotic has deep purple spots in little rows radiating from the center, with a pinkish background. By crossing it with Daniella I hope to keep the spot pattern the same but make the background more peachy or yellow colored.

Another question just occured to me... Once the flowers are mature enough, how many of the flowers on the pod parent should I pollinate? I thought maybe if i did two or three it would give a better chance for it to work. Of course I dont want to over stress the plant so what do you think?

Three shouldn't be too many. I'd definitely do more than one (if you can). Just a note on the age of the parent flowers: somewhere along the line I read that the seed parent should be younger - fully opened, but fresh. The pollen can, in some, mature at a different rate (to prevent self-pollinating). We also know that pollen can be stored for extended periods of time. If I had the choice, I'd use pollen from a flower that's been fully opened for at least a week and I'd put it on a flower that's only been fully open for about three days. But that's just my total hack amateur :twocents: .

Well I have awesome news! I pollinated three flowers on friday and today I noticed that the columns are swelling on all three and the petals are starting to go limp and curl. Also, I noticed that the female cup-like part (I forget the name right now) has closed up on all three flowers. I used pollin from the older flowers instead of the flowers that just opened and I pollinated flowers that have been open for about a week, so I guess it worked!? Out of the three I'm hoping at least one makes a decent seed pod but I'm thinking about cutting off two of them once they start making seeds. After all I dont really have the room to rear all the seedlings from three seed pods!

Magnus, sorry got to ask you this silly question, Stigma of same flower or of another flower? Excuse me because I am very new to orchids keeping.

Congratulations
Sounds ilke you are a grandparent!
I would leave two pods one could still abort and this gives you a double chance. If you are sucessfull one pod may give you more seed than you want to raise.

Are there any rules when it comes to cross pollination? I have a big white phal and a deep thick purple phal and would be interested to see a cross

Do your research. Growing orchids from seed is a lot more involved than putting seed in the garden. with your Phals you are talking 3+ years before you might see results. (six months for the pod, a year for flasking and a year 1/2 to two years to blooming size).Try to find out as much as you can about the parents. Some crosses will not take due to sterility issues etc. If it seems worth it then go ahead it can be a very interesting pastime.

This is an update-

Unfortunatly about two weeks after my last post, all of the flowers on the potential pod parent shriveled up and fell off, including the pedicels (the stems containing the ovaries) Even the flowers that were not fertilized fell off soon after the fertilzed ones. I don't know why this happened but I have a few guesses. The first guess is that the pod parent's flowers were too old and were slated to drop off soon anyway, and the second guess is that the ploydy of the two parents didn't match up so the flowers just died. Amazingly, the pod parent has a new infloresence growing now that the weather has turned cooler, and the seed parent still has flowers remaining on it from it's first bloom in late summer, and is also showing some new activity on the ends of the inflorescences so it may make new buds. However, I don't think I will try it again with these two parents unless I can figure out why it didn't work. If anyone has any good suggestions please post them!

I'm trying to do research as much as I can... I got some books from my local orchid society's library but none of them go into hybrdizing in very great detail. I also searched Amazon.com for any books that might be helpful but could not find anything specific looking enough. If anyone has a title of a good book that might help please let me know.

I have a friend who's family owns an orchid nursery and she does all of the flasking for them. They create their own crosses but send their best plants to china to make the clones. My favorite plants are the seedlings that I have bought from them. If I could come up with a seed pod I know she would teach me to flask it and let me use her lab. (I have done tissue culture in my college ornamental horticulture class before so I think I can handle it). 3 years seems like a very short time from protocorm to flowering!!

Also, I'm signed up for evolutionary biology lecture and lab class next semester and perhaps I could use one of the lab microscopes to check ploidy if I had a good book that explained how to prepare the slides. I know roughly that you are supposed to find a cell in the proper stage of mitosis and count the chromosomes, but it seems like it may be difficult to actually do this and correctly interpret the results without some kind of book for guidance.

Thanks in advance,
Lisa