Using mixed pollen?

This spring I felt really smug with my pollen collecting after obtaining some new hybridizing tools, ie 200 small vials and storage boxes with 50 individual numbered compartments and natural bristle brushes. This week I had collected pollen from 45 different roses and all were stored and cataloged. Early on my hubby mentioned that there was a flaw in my system in that the individual vials were not marked. I noted his suggestion but just never took the time to mark the vials. This week after completing cross number 89 I reached to replace the vial in its numbered slot and something slipped. The box fell to the patio spilling every single vial from its numbered slot. Shall I say tears were shed! What to do? I emptied all the vials into a larger container and the next day made a few crosses with the “mixed” pollen. One of these crosses was on Eyeconic Lemonade.

I know some here have used mixed pollen, what have been your results?

BTW, I am now recollecting pollen and all the vials are now numbered, sometimes the Hubby does have a better idea.

The pollen works, for sure, but if there are 45 different choices as to whom is the pollen parent, you might be struggling to identify what is what. I have used mixed pollen where I mixed a native specie with a yellow and with a dark color donor, thinking that would be easy, but it isn’t always. I did this when I thought maybe one or two of the pollens was getting old, but I still had a lot and thought I would take my chances. I am/was having a difficult time sorting a few of the results out. One bonus is that you might get a few results that are counter intuitive—and it might be something you would never have tried.

Hi Joan,

So sorry about that! I’ve used mixed pollen on purpose at times, but wouldn’t be too happy about unintentional mixes. I think Jackie is right though - you might get something really neat!

Hi Joan,

Thanks for sharing your awkward moment in time.

I’m not a fan of listening to “perfect” stories, “look at my perfect” roses, and “I don’t do any mistakes” scenarios…boring…

Gimme a real life stuff up story any time…Love your real life story!!

It’s great you mixed all the pollen up and not just give up, that is great quick thinking.

Very little pollen was lost, and you worked out a better way because of what happened in the end.

Nothing much lost, sooo much gained by you, and by us reading about what happened.

I hope one of 'em mixed pollen jobs proves something unique for you, to top it all off!

I guess I should be a bit more precise…

I’ve mixed pollens, of similar types to obtain results when it was either inconsequential which of a cross produced the results or there were too many variations of the cross to keep the separate. I’ve mixed several of Ralph’s yellow minis, all with the same parentage of 1-72-1 X Gold Badge and I’ve mixed DLFED pollens because I didn’t care WHICH made the seed, it was the parentage, not the specific cultivar that mattered. Later, once I found the results were interesting, I began keeping track of the specific seedling of the parentage that created the seed. But, I wouldn’t mix DLFED pollens with Hugonis or other pollens because I would want to know precisely which species made what results.

I do a lot of mixed labeled pollen. I do it mainly to save time and space. Also, I want to have a higher success rate with hip set. In short, I’d rather figure out what rose has what pollen parent than have fewer scucesses. It is not like many “keepers” make it to the finish line anyways. The only time I will not do mixed pollen is if the cross is either special or its of a species where deciphering my be improbable.

I have often mixed all of the pollen that is left over at the end of the season and freeze it so I have something to use on a couple of the early bloomers in the spring before I can collect some fresh.

Oy…

I can fully imagine your frustration and upset. I for one am somebody who wants to pretend that any good seedling occurred as the result of a well-planned cross on my part, even if that never really is the reality of it. Roses don’t seem to understand my intentions and generally aren’t cooperative.

In art, the term folks sometimes use when being forced to work with a creation-gone-wrong, thus heading into an unplanned direction with unexpected results, is frequently, “happy accident”. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will be a serendipitous event resulting in a wonderful seedling that you could have never planned nor hoped for.

I have had MANY “happy accidents” in my years of gardening- planting Silver Moon next to Paul’s Scarlet Climber and having the brillian crimson red and pure white set off each other- the thought of red and white in general is a nono in my mind- planting Tausendschoen and Ghislaine de Feligonde next to each other and having the pink and apricot/white blooms intertwined, Prairie Harvest and Winter Sunset presenting an outdoor bouquet of yellow and apricot roses in the distance. These were all things I had done mainly with the thought of expediency and nature gifted me.

So many times a disaster turned into a gift. Hang in there; let us see the babies that nature will provide.



Jim P

John, That is such a good idea–my early blooming good seed parents are not what I want as pollen parents.

Freezing pollen sounds better and better. At least the how to was printed out. Neil

Haven’t I read here somewhere that using blended pollen might increase hip set and be a way to get some difficult crosses to set seed?

For instance, if one was trying to use a diploid species parent on a modern tetraploid and it wasn’t setting hips, maybe you could mix in just a little bit of some pollen from a fertile tetraploid, which would be better at getting some seeds to set. The slower moving diploid pollen could then maybe sneak down and fertilize a few ovules because the hip wouldn’t have aborted. If there was a clear contrast in characteristics, it would be easy to separate out the seedlings that were born of the species rose.

Also for roses that are of iffy female fertility, using mixed pollen might give one the best chances of getting hips to set.

My population breeding is just using mixed pollen on selected seed bearers. Most seed and pollen parents being of same or similar parentage.

Added to this mix are pollens with features I wish to add i.e. intending to yellow diploid. Lot of seedlings parents particularly the more interesting ones are easy to identify.

If a seedling is a good step forward and its pollen parent not identified (triploids are not always easy) I do not care and the wanted feature is eventually sib or backcrossed as a distinct sub population.

Thanks for the input everyone. I just hated for all that pollen to go to waste. It should be interesting to see what comes of my little “happy accident”. I have only used the mix on 5 crosses and that will probably be the extent of it. Most were on my own crosses but I did put some on Dragon’s Blood based on Paul Barden’s comment on HMF that Dragon’s Blood has good gene’s for color and floriference. I thought it would be interesting to see the color spectrum that it might produce.

There is evidence that mixed pollen germinates better than pollination by a single specimen. Some of the evidence is scientific (controlled studies), some is anecdotal.

Cook: Hybridizing (1907)

I have several [rose] seedlings, where the pollen was taken from three and four different varieties mixed together, and they are the richest color in red of any I have ever raised.

The New Phytologist 138(3): 481 (March 1998)

Pollen–pollen interactions in Betula pendula in vitro

H. L. PASONEN & M. KÄPYLÄ

Direct pollen interactions, as well as interactions mediated by a recipient, can have a remarkable influence on pollen fertilization ability. Under conditions of pollen competition it could be advantageous if pollen grains interfered with the germination of other pollen. The aim of this study was to find out if there are direct negative or positive pollen–pollen interactions between pollen grains from genetically slightly different donors. The in vitro germinability of the pollen from several Betula pendula Roth clones was investigated. The pollen interactions between the clones were examined pairwise by using equal pollen mixtures. In three of the eight cases the germination percentage of the pollen mixture was significantly higher than the average germination percentage of the separate clones that formed the mixture, which indicates some type of interaction between the pollen populations. We found only positive interactions between the pollen of clones. This study also documented density-dependent germination of pollen grains in vitro (=pollen population effect). Adding an aqueous pollen extract to the incubation medium increased the germination percentages of poorly germinating pollen and small pollen populations. Germination-stimulating effects were found to exist both with fresh and dead pollen. Such direct pollen–pollen interactions could be explained by specific water-soluble substances diffusing from pollen grains.

I have a bibliography of various other reports.

http://www.bulbnrose.org/Heredity/King/PollenMixtures.html

Karl

1 Like

Karl, thank you for signing on here! You BELONG here!

I’ve usually only mixed pollen when it was the end of a long day of pollinating in the old garden, and I had excess I’d collected and wanted to make use of them. I’d dump them all together then hit anything and everything with it as I picked up and moved toward the car. Ralph actually suggested years ago to improve your chances of fertilization when using pollen known for being “difficult”, to mix it with perhaps self pollen. The reasoning was the odd fertilization may not be sufficient to trigger the plant to ripen the hip, but selfs would. He proposed it should be fairly easy to determine what was an actual cross and which were selfs in most cases. I guess, in a more controlled situation than I’ve done, that could be true when crossing widely different roses.

Karl and Kim, when you talk about ‘mixed pollen’ do you mean only from the one variety of rose bush. ? If this is so and the flowers had not been touched by outside influence(controlled attmosphere) would the crosses made come out the same. If not the plant must hold onto prior genes(influence), is this right.

By “mixed pollen”, David, think of it this way. You want to pollinate a rose using pollen which is known to be difficult, so instead of just using that difficult pollen alone, you mix it with pollen you know will work. Potentially, the reliable pollen will set seed and trigger the rose to ripen the hip due to the “pregnancy hormones” being released. Possibly, some of the seed may result from actually being pollinated by the difficult pollen. Perhaps, not enough to have triggered the rose to carry the pregnancy full term, but all it takes is one to accomplish the goal. Anything else which comes from the hip would theoretically be self set. Some breeders mix many pollens together because they are all varieties they wish to explore but don’t have/want to take the time or room to explore them all. Theoretically, they will get some results from each type they mix together, but unless there are strong characteristics attributable to each, how would you know which came from what?

Jim mixes many different Hulthemia hybrid pollens together for that reason. There are too many possibilities, requiring too much time, room and potential seedlings to explore each one individually. That’s what I did with the Dottie Louise X Fedtschenkoana pollen for a long time and what I did with all the various Moore 1-72-1 X Gold Badge variants. I honestly didn’t care WHICH made the seedling, I wanted to know which ancestors were responsible, so it didn’t matter if it was Cal Poly, Joycie, Golden Gardens, etc. as they were all from the same parents. I didn’t care which DLFED worked, as they were all Dottie Louise X Fed. results. It’s only been after observing the individual seedlings for years I’ve settled in on which I wish to explore further, so I only use those as seed and pollen parents.

So, you can mix anything you want and apply it all to the same seed parent bloom. Potentially, you’re going to get something of interest, you just may not know precisely from what.

I just pollinated Therese Bugnet with a mixture of Oso Happy Smoothie and R. xanthina pollen… I was hoping that having the mixture might help increase my chances, since people have had mixed results with TB as a seed parent.

It might not be advisable to mix pollen from a diploid rose with pollen from a tetraploid, as pollen from tetraploids has been found to have a competitive advantage. However, it was really interesting to read in the above quote that even mixing dead pollen with live pollen from a different rose helped to increase hip set.

Pollen mixtures can be useful when attempting to breed with a species. Instead of picking one specimen at random and hoping for the best, grab pollen from several plants.

There is also evidence of a sort of “step father” effect. Only one pollen tube fuses with the ovum, of course, but other pollen tubes traveling down the style at the same time can influence the metabolism of the embryo. Polyakov (1963) wrote, “In 1953-1962 we recommended and used the new method for studying fertilization processes with the help of the pollen labelled with radioactive isotopes S[sup]35[/sup] and P[sup]32[/sup]. For the first time these tests were direct physiological evidence that pollen without taking direct part in double fertilization is active in metabolic processes of growing seeds.”

There are various possible interactions between pollen grains and pollen tubes.

Karl

1 Like