All very nice plants Yong.
My concern from the experimenting I have done would I be creating a weaker plant.

Interesting stuff you have done there Yong.I like the real dark plant for colour, but the 2 plants with the chantinii 'Black' have it for shape ,and that cross being a primary hybrid should be vigerous , and you have shown that this type of breeding can be done as not all bigenerics are sterile ,but they often lose some of the features we wish to capture ,the fact that you use 2 spotted parents does not mean you will enhance the spots ( as Lisa stated as well ) but you have to keep us posted on what they grow up like and how the flower spikes look , Well done Mate ,
Jack

Interesting crosses, Yong. You may be the first person to have achieved a quadrigeneric. Congratulations! The fact that the bigenerics were fertile may point to a closer relationship between the parent species than what their current taxonomic classifications would imply.

Of course, you'll want to wait for some clear indication that the cross actually took before registering them, and also hold them to the same standards as you would any monogeneric hybrid. A lot of the bigenerics in the registry are frankly rather ugly. They make for interesting mad scientist experiments, but most of them have limited commercial appeal. The trick is always to find parents that truly complement each other, regardless of what genus they are.

If the black chantinii was the pollen parent of the second bunch, then it certainly looks like that cross took. I agree the first dark seedling is very nice. You can see both parents in the N. mooreana cross too. Which one was seed parent of those? It's funny, Neos of that subgenus (Hylaeicum) don't seem to want to cross with the "regular" Neos at all. Maybe they are more closely related to Aechmeas?

I've made a lot of bigeneric crosses and the results are usually very dull. Everything just seems to average out so that you don't get any of the interesting features of either parent but instead you get only hints of features. That isn't always the case, but it happens a lot.

Lisa, I tried to cross N. pendula, a Hylaeaicum, with a few Aechmeas and nothing happened. I'll have to try some other genera next time I get the chance.

Yeah, I tried Neo. pendula with Ae. recurvata, Nick, but I got no take. Also tried both of them with Orth. navioides. No luck there either. Too bad, those could have been interesting, and they have enough similar traits that I don't think they would have canceled each other out.

Hell HDD,Jack, Lisa and Nick,

Thank for the comments.

HDD. I also have the same though. Bigeneric plant is weak. There is only some seeds got and a few seedlings can survive. It's hard to select the best plant from very few plant.

Jack. Everything could happen in our world. In my experience pollens from bigeneric plants are almost sterile but some pistil can except other pollens. The results are not so good. I think chantinii 'Black' is one of my fevorite plants in my breeding program.

Lisa. I have to wait and hold them until bloomed. Select only the best to register. I also think that bigeneric usually have no commercial value. How to fill the gap? In the second and third I used Ae.chantinii'Black' as a pollen plant. This was my first time to cross N.mooreana with other genera. I didn't expect the result. It was surprising about seedlings from the cross. I also tried to cross N.pendula x eleutheropetala with some Neo. The result was not so good. I have very seedling left and still very young to guess.

Nick.I always have fun to do the experiment and eager to see the result eventhough I get only hints. I think that we are like-minded. ;-)

Cheers
Yong

I don't think bigeneric plants are weak, per se, but you do end up with plants that just aren't going to make it. I guess you could say that you get a lot of birth defects as well as incompatible survival features.

This week I was again reading the Givinish article on DNA analysis of bromeliads and I realized just how far apart you can make crosses given that there are Dyckia and Hechtia crosses. It looks like it's been almost 14 million years since Dyckias and Hechtias had a common ancestor and yet you can still cross them.

I have a correction, I guess there really aren't any xDycktias so the next interesting cross would be the xPuckia or xPucohnia crosses which would be be something like 13 million years since a common ancestor.

Hi Nick, that Gavinish article on bromeliad DNA sounds interesting. Is it available online anywhere? Or can you give me the reference details? Thanks, Paul

Hi again Nick, is this it? http://www.botany.wisc.edu/givnish/pdfs/Givnish%20Bromeliaceae.pdf

Cheers, Paul

I have a print out and wasn't sure it was on the net but that looks to be it.