unseen in nature, hibiscus seedlings
 

So after researching how to grow new baby orchids, i then decided to look into growing new hibiscus plants. (they have a much shorter wait time for first blooms and are a bit easier to germinate) :biggrin:

anyway - just thought i would share my seedling pics

i have the herd, about 12 seedlings around a year old or so..
Attachment 101475

and the babies, germinated 15 days ago
Attachment 101476

i likely already posted the pic of the first seedling bloom i got..Attachment 101477
a mini version of its pod parent...not overly surprising

I find it rather interesting that no one knows what the original pollinator of tropical hibiscus was. all current crosses are done by humans...

Cool, not something I've tried growing. Lovely flowers.

I kept the Great Red Hibiscus, Hibiscus coccineus for many, many years as a garden plant in U.S.D.A. zone 7b (central Virginia). It was very easy to grow. I haven't tried to grow it here yet. It sets tons of seeds.

Hibiscus coccineus - Plant Finder

What I noticed with some of your seedlings is the leaf division which has started to show up as mature leaves form. Notice how C. coccineus has very divided leaves, almost looks like Cannabis, especially from a distance. But C. coccineus seedlings have very different juvenile leaves, which are not divided at all, though they are toothed along the edge.

cool

yep - i was quite surprised to see those tri-lobed leaves, my family kept joking that maybe i was secretly growing cannibis. All of these seeds came from one of two pod parents: butterfly or red double, but i don't know which is which. the pollen parents are most likely each other, i didn't keep track that year. so now i am really excited to see what the flowers end up looking like! one of the few of these that i know for sure who the pod parent was - came from red double and the seedling is showing the tri-lobed leaves. of course all the varieties have crossed back and forth for a couple hundred years now, so its possible some of the other species genes are in there.

Very cool!

Hibiscus is the national flower of Malaysia and is pollinated by butterflies ;)


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do you know which butterflies? they don't seem to do the job here. also which hibiscus is it? its not one of the species hib's is it? those ones are self fertile.

We grow several color forms of the native hardy herbaceous Hibiscus moscheutos, and they seem to be pollinated mostly by bumblebees (Bombax) - they are constantly in the flowers, often staying overnight, and leave covered with pollen.

We finally have eliminated the Japanese beetles, but until we did they preferred the hibiscus to everything but roses and did a lot of damage to them. They may also have incidentally pollinated a few.

The non-native hibiscus we've grown seem to attract a wider variety of insects.

I really like the yellow color you got on your seedling. Our natives are all shade of white, pink, red ....

Steve

thank you! i have almost all tropical hib's. and boy did the insects like them this year! i think i have gotten every pest possible on the poor things. i have been fertilizing them and treated them with some bayer - so far i got some of the pests, still more to go...thankfully hte grasshppoers don't seem to like the hib's, they stick to my wisteria plants instead.