Very ingenious - good tip!

IT WORKS FOR ME
Donna, Do you mean to say that?
The seedlings are always what you visualised?
All seedlings from a pod are exactly alike?
There are no throwbacks?
If so it is an excellent device.

Arif,
All I am saying is that it is an easier way (for me) to feel more secure that the stigma stays clean before you put your pollen on..Lets just say that I feel more confident than I'm not working with a previously contaminated stigma..obviously this is not a scientific experiment, just a do it yourselfer....that's all...;-)

All my pollenating is done inside so I don't have to worry about wind or insects..and as you all know, some flowers have very short stigmas and they are laying close if not actually touching the pollen sacks and many times the pollen sacks will open before the flower does (sorry if I'm being redundant) so, when trying to work with a flower as such, I find it so easy to slip the straw over the stigma which is very easily done without disturbing anything...

And, of course the jury is still out as to how successful I've been...I don't use this method exclusively..just snipping off the unopened pollen sacks works in most situations...!

Donna

I have done this with hibiscus for years working on a bridge from syriacus-rosa-sinensis.

Someone else I know just informed me she does this with hybridizing her daylilies..so I guess it's by no way a novel idea is it....

It's kinda cutesy you thought of it as a condom. :-P. Honestly I read about someone doing this for some other plant and thought about my hibiscus experiments. Maybe it was your daylily lady.

Donna, My working conditions are different; I cannot avoid interference by other pollinators and frankly I don�t mind, anything worth keeping is kept at home, the rest goes to the public garden I am developing at my hotel.
Arif

Very, very clever (and funny description), thanks for sharing it with everyone. I love it!