Recently in Hybridizing Category

Now that our summer heat has settled in I have completely given up on attempting to make any new Brugmansia crosses until fall.  Meanwhile this busy bee has arrived for a quick drink and perhaps an inadvertent attempt to pollinate this bloom.
I'm sure the nectar from this bloom is quite refreshing on this hot summer day.
It's cool the way its little legs are laden with pollen.  I have lots of great blooms open now so if the bee does manage to create a successful cross, the outcome could be special.
This bee looks mighty comfy perched on a group of anthers.  I missed the shot of the bee visiting the stigma prior to entering the corolla tube.

Now that Podapalooza is winding down its time for Seedapalooza!  My back is already aching just thinking about the future work these little seeds will create. Here's a recent batch ready to be topped off with a layer of soil.
Each one of the pots below represent a unique Brugmansia seed cross.  As you can easily see, lots of crosses are in various stages of germination below. I believe I have one of the most aggressive brugmansia hybridizing programs on the planet in place.  By the time I finishing harvesting seed pods next month i will have sown seeds from at least 200 unique brugmansia seed crosses this year. 

This time of year fresh Angel Trumpet seeds typically germinate in 10-14 days, but may take as long as two months.  I try to sow seeds as soon as possible after harvesting the pods. Once the seedlings show their second set of leaves I transplant them into cell pack trays. Approximately 6-8 weeks later they will be moved up to gallon size pots where they will remain until next spring. 

A couple of weeks after they are transplanted into the cell trays I will start treating them with a growth regulator to attempt to keep the seedlings more compact.  I'm still experimenting with using a growth regulator, but the last time I used it the treated plants on average were about 2 feet shorter than the non-treated ones.  Without treatment many of the seedlings could be 4-5 feet tall by fall and that size plant in a gallon size pot is very hard to manage.

It is exciting to see the seeds germinate knowing that there could be some exciting new beauties in the mix.  Of course these little babies will soon be 4-6 feet tall.  When you start thinking about the 3,000-4,000 new seedlings I expect to pot up this summer, you can see why my back will soon be aching!

The skin on some Brugmansia seed pods can be as tough as leather, allowing a ripe pod to hang on the plant for weeks and weeks after it has dried.  For others, the skin disintegrates in a matter of days.  Within a couple of weeks after ripening the pod may look like the one pictured below.

I caught this pod just in time.  When I held it to snip it off the plant, it completely fell apart leaving me clutching a handful of Angel Trumpet seeds.  Fortunately the weather had been calm for the week prior, preventing a strong gust of wind from dispersing the seeds to the ground.  Because pods ripen in just a couple of days when they reach maturity, I try to harvest the ripened pods every couple of days.

If you are new to growing Brugmansia this photo will help you understand how the seeds are arranged in a pod.

In recent weeks I have been harvesting ripe seed pods from my Spring Brugmansia crosses.  After two consecutive years of freezes and very few seed pods, this bountiful seed pod harvest is well appreciated.

Our summer heat arrived early this year so many of the seed pods were smaller than usual.  This means I have fewer seeds from each cross than I had anticipated, This does not mean that I have a shortage of seeds to sow, I'll just have fewer seeds to share with members of the International Brugmansia and Datura Society. I have already sown seeds from at least 150 unique brugmansia crosses I made this season.  By the time I finish harvesting pods later this month the total should be close to 200 unique crosses.

Below you will see a bunch of ripe seed pods I collected one afternoon.   

I'm really excited about the potential of many of the crosses I was able to make this year.  Check back late next summer/fall to see if the crosses exceeded my expectations.  :)

Going into this weeks freeze I was concerned about the 100+ pods that have already set on my Angel Trumpets.  The pods are in various stages of development, from a few weeks old to 6-8 weeks old.  I have some great crosses going this year including these using Brugmansia Lizzy as the pod parent.  Here's a young Lizzy x Angel's Gold Face pod.

After two back to back frigid winters, I am determined to keep my plants alive this winter.  This week's hard freeze brought the temperatures down to the mid-20's.  We also ended up having 6-8 hours of below freezing temps both nights.  As you can see, this Brugmansia Lizzy x Herbstzauer pod came through in great shape.

Brugmansia rarely set pods in the heat so we cannot successfully pollinate the flowers down here until October.  By May the success rate falls rapidly down to about 0%. This year I had very few seed pods because by the time my plants rebounded from the freeze and started blooming again, summer was already here. I'm working on some really great crosses this year.  I'm also making lots of crosses so I can help stock the iBrugs Seed Bank.  Here's another Brugmansia Lizzy cross whose pod may contain some winning seeds.  This time Langenbuscher Garten is the father. 

These are just 3 of about 15 successful crosses I have made with Lizzy this fall.  This winter should be Podatstic!
 

Many of my Brugmansia seedlings devastated by this past winter's freeze are finally starting to bloom.  It is amazing how resilient these plants can be.   One that really caught my attention tonight was this beautiful seedling from a cross between Orange Zest and an unknown cultivar.

Orange Zest is a new cultivar I introduced and registered last fall.  It came from a cross Liz Fichtl made between Jacayna and The Chief.  These blooms have a strong resemblance to those of Orange Zest, but are larger.  They also have the same pleasant scent as orange Zest.  I know Orange Zest is in bloom right now so I'll try to grab a comparison shot of the two side by side.

This seedling is growing in full sun and thriving.  It is certainly worth watching for the rest of the season to see how it performs.

I have lots more seedlings from this cross yet to bloom, along with plenty more from other crosses involving Orange Zest.  You can bet that I'll have more Orange Zest eye candy to share as the summer goes on.

A couple of readers have asked where all my Angel Trumpet blooms come from so I decided to post a few photos of my primary growing areas.  Today's photos are from what I call my brug jungle.  This is an area where I tie the largest brugmansia seedlings to rows of rope to help keep them upright.  The seedlings are in 3-4 gallon size pots and have to be at least 6 feet tall to earn their place in one of these rows. 

This photo shows older seedlings carried over from 2008.  Many suffered damage in last year's freezes and are just now preparing to bloom.  Most of the plants tied up here are 7-8 feet tall. 

Here's a picture showing the younger seedlings that have an average age of just over a year old. My guess is that I have about 1,200 brugmansia seedlings in my "tie zone".

When these seedlings bloom they are either tagged as watch, trash, or sell.  I often wait a couple of bloom cycles before I get around to tagging them.  Some of the ones I want to watch are immediately pulled and placed in 7 gallon pots.  If any show signs of weakness or possible disease, they are yanked right away and put in my burn pile.

The ones marked "sell" are ones that are nice seedlings, but are not unique enough to be carried over into my hybridizing program.  I plan to sell some of these at a couple of spring plant shows in 2010.

I'll wait until winter before I before I start pulling the "to be trashed" ones from the mix.

I just found my first Angel Trumpet seed pod of the fall season!  One disadvantage of hybridizing brugmansia in Florida is that it is nearly impossible to get crosses to take and set pods when the temps are in the 90's.  A couple of weeks ago we had a mini cold snap that lasted for a couple of days.  The first night it was cool out I went outside and pollinated about 30 blooms.   A couple of days later the temps were back up in the 90's and breaking records.  Because of that i did not expect any crosses to take and I was quite surprised to find this lone pod tonight.

Dazed and confused is a great description for these Angel Trumpet blooms.  This is the first seedling of my cross between brugmansia Inca Sun and Masquerade to bloom.  While I was hoping for an ever-blooming yellow Masquerade type, I'm not quite ready to give up hope.  I have a bunch more from this cross that will be blooming this year and hopefully at least a couple will be worthy of holding over.  I also plan to cross any keepers I have from this cross back to Inca Sun.

After planting seeds from about 40 immature brugmansia seed pods I'm excited to report that about 1/3 already have seeds sprouting!  I'm sure more crosses will sprout in the next week or two.  This is way cool because I had some important crosses I was afraid I might have lost in the freeze. 

There are at least 30 more seeds pods that were damaged in the freeze that I plan to plant next weekend. My guess is that I have about the same number that did not get damaged that are still growing on their mother plants.

Next month the cycle starts all over when I expect to have a bunch of blooms open and ready to be pollinated.