New Hybrid Attempt: C Hawaiian Wedding Song 'Virgin' x Clty Chantilly Lace 'Twinkle'

[wetfeet101b]

This is my first attempt of hybridizing orchids. All my previous excersizes were just to practice and hone my skills at pollinating the flowers.

Now that I have two orchids that I really want to cross, I am going to try to stick with this project until completion.
If the pod fails, I will just try again the next time they bloom.

Pod Parent: Cattleya Hawaiian Wedding Song 'Virgin'


Pollen Parent: Caulocattleya Chantilly Lace 'Twinkle' (syn. Diacattleya)


Here's how I pollinated the flower:

Step 1: Plant selection. I chose the two plants based on their traits that I *HOPE* would be passed on to the offspring.
Comparison of the entire plants:


Comparison of the flower sizes:


Step 2: Tools of the trade.
Some people use toothpicks, fine paint brushes, etc. I choose to use a short length of garden wire with one end curved. This facilitates easier hooking and attaching of the pollen.


Step 3: Get the pollen
Place a white piece of cloth or paper under the flower. This is to make sure that the anther cap (and the pollen) does not fall onto the floor after being dislodged from the flower. In my case, my greenhouse floor is dirt and wood bark. If the pollen falls onto the floor it is gone forever.

With my preferred hooking tool, I carefully dislodged the anther cap from the flower's column.
With my hooked wire, I inserted the hooked end face up all the way under the column until it hit the stigma pit (sticky substance) behind the anther cap. I then pulled out the wire tool in an upward motion so that it hooks into the back of the anther cap and dislodges it from the column.

This photo shows the anther cap (with pollen) sitting on the labellum. It did not fall onto the paper, or onto the floor.


Next step is to remove the pollen from the anther cap.


Step 4: Pollinating the pod parent
Now that we have the pollen, it is time to put it to good use. It is time to pollinate the "female" plant.

Using the same wire hook, I attached the pollen to the hooked tip. I used some extra "stigma paste" from the pollen parent to help the pollen stick to the wire better.

I then carefully pulled down the labellum of the pod parent flower to reveal the stigma pit just behind the anther cap.
I then inserted the wire with the pollen until it touches the stigma. The sticky paste in the stigma will cause the pollen to stick to the flower and detach itself from the wire.
One pollinia should be enough, but I put all four of them in there just to be sure.

Photo of the stigma containing the recently attached pollinia.
With any luck, the pollination should be successful and I should see the ovary start to swell within one week.


Step 5: Label the cross
If you are only pollinating one pod, then you can skip this step.
However, it is still highly recommended that you label the flower with the pollen parent for future identification.


Step 6: The parents are then returned to their favorite spots in the greenhouse:



I will post updates to this thread once there are significant milestones.

John