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dannydaemonic

How do you hybridize Lantanas?

DannyDaemonic
18 years ago

There are so many different kinds of Lantanas; I'd love to make some of my own unique combinations. Their flowers are so small that I can't make out pistils or anthers, or anything of the such. As far as I know they aren't dioecious plants. Anyone know how you would hybridize these?

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:995966}}

Comments (4)

  • admmad
    18 years ago

    You will need to go deep into the corolla tube to find the stamens and pistil. I will try to post a schematic diagram.

  • admmad
    18 years ago

    {{gwi:995967}}

  • DannyDaemonic
    Original Author
    18 years ago

    Thank you for the diagram. I cut open a flower and sure enough the stamen are suspended just like the diagram shows, two stamen on each half of the dissection. However, for some reason it took me several flowers to find one with a pistil; I'm guessing they had dried up in the other flowers but that's just a guess.

    My question now becomes, how do you transfer the pollen from the anther to the stigma without killing the flower? Maybe I could just cut the flower with tiny scissors and hope that it doesn't dry out too quickly. Also some of the flowers I tried to cut just now fell off; hopefully this won't happen with newer flowers.

  • admmad
    18 years ago

    I believe you must get the flower pollinated before the colour changes. That is the flower (of Lantana camara) is one colour, yellow, when freshly opened and changes colour (to red) a day or so later when it is too old.

    I would suggest cutting a slit down the corolla tube that you are going to use as the female parent. You could just cut the entire flower when collecting pollen and not try pollinating the flowers you use as male parents. That would waste half the flowers but might still leave you with enough. Or else you can bag the flower after pollinating it.

    Apparently lantana preferentially cross-pollinates, but bagging blooms both before they open and after pollinating them can help make certain the seeds were produced by the cross you made rather than also contaminated by insect pollinators. You would probably need to 'bag' the entire flower head (inflorescence) since the flowers are so small. A small paper bag or a light-coloured (and by weight) small cloth bag would do.

    The flowers that fell off were too old for pollinating.

    Lanatana's open their flowers in a particular order called centripetally, with the older flowers toward the outside of the flower head (inflorescence) and the youngest flowers towards its centre.

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