Neil, I use an artist’s brush. The types that come in paint by numbers kits. It is probably around an 1/8 of an inch.
My middle finger works best for me. If I am doing 2 pollens at the same time, I’ll use my ring finger for the second pollen. I have no trouble getting pollen where it belongs, and I only use a bit. Since developing allergies to rose pollen, I do not wipe my finger on my pants, but instead use a damp paper towel to wipe off any remaining pollen when switching to another pollen. I also wash my hands upon entering the house before I do anything else. I’ve learned that I’ll “pay for it” all day long if I forget and rub my eyes before washing!
Pollen allergies would definitely STOP me using ANY of my fingers … each to their own …LOL!
As long as ur having fun… wateverrrr…
Pollen allergies haven’t stopped me from breeding roses, but oy, how they’ve tried!
I am starting to check for crosses that have proved to be infertile, and looking at the sepals is a pretty good way to check many. This seems quite intuitive but for some reason I have never heard this one before. Even though there are exceptions (seems to be a plant by plant basis) this does work most of the time. Thanks for the tip.It works.
Young Lycidas (a newer Austin rose) does not seem to have set any hips with various pollens. It is so double that it doesn’t seem to have many anthers…that’s why I used it only as a seed parent. It is my first Austin rose and it’s still in a pot, but its fragrance was so wonderful that I wanted to cross it.
At this point I think I can say with confidence that alas, Mongol’s Hat does not set hips. All 15 left on the plant have yellowed and died.
How did you use MH, Fara? How old is it?
Simon, I just let the bees do their work. The hips looked as if they were going to take but in the end yellowed up and died. MH is four years old.
-Fa
This year I had my first cross with R. bracteata. I hope the cross will germinate.
In Germany R. bracteata is a unusual rose. It`s too cold.
Baby Love sets hips. This winter a lot of seedlings germinated.
But the seedlings which Baby Love is pollen parent don`t like to germinate.
Now I have one or two hips with R. foetida as pollen parent.
Andrea
Sorry guys for taking so long to respond.
I’ve been spending my days out in the field, and by the time I get home I’m completely worn out…
We’ve been using natural bristle brushes for as long as I’ve been working here.
Cleaning is supper simple, I dip them in 95% ethanol and they dry almost instantaneously! (Or, maybe that’s just an advantage of living in a warm climate!)
I do have several bushes I go through. I use one until I’m done with that particular pollen and then I dip it and grab another brush. By the time I’m finished with the next pollen the first brush is already dry.
You could use soap and water, but it takes too long to dry.
We’ve tried using those plastic bristle brushes, but the pollen doesn’t stick to the bristles as well.
I try not to touch the pollen at all since I’m VERY allergic to it. (I envy you Jim, I could never remember to keep my hands off my face when I tried using my fingers for pollinations!!)
When I started pollinating roses and other plants, I wanted to do it right and bought some brushes. Now I don’t bother with them. I particularly enjoy Donald Beaton’s comment in his article on Hybridization in the Magazine of Botany 16: 13-14 (1849):
“It is only necessary to be most scrupulous about the access of any pollen but the sort intended, and not to use a camel-hair brush to dust the pollen with. A brush that has been used more than once is little better than a lottery chance for experiments.”
Karl
A brush that has been used more than once is little better than a lottery chance for experiments."
what exactly is that supposed to mean?
Of course this was written before ethanol or acetone were used as quick drying cleaners. Can pollen survive these types of treatments and still be viable?
George,
A “lottery chance” is slim to none. I just thought it was a clever way of saying that brushes are unreliable, if you’re really concerned about parentage. But I’m rather partial to Beaton’s style of writing.
Beaton’s aversion to brushes served him well, and led to a remarkable discovery.
Journal of Horticulture and Practical Gardening, 1: 312-313 (July 23, 1861)
INFLUENCE OF THE POLLEN IN THE SAME FLOWER
Donald Beaton
"In the great bulk of the Scarlet or Horseshoe Geraniums there are but seven stamens, four long ones, one of medium length, but which is often wanting, and two almost sessile like the anthers of Wheat—that is, very short indeed, and opening at the bottom face to face. These two are they which reduce a whole family to beggary; first to dwarfs or Tom Thumbs, or better still, to minimums, or the smallest of that kind consistent with vigour sufficient to become a useful plant in cultivation, and, lastly, to the brink of ruin, and drive that race out of existence altogether, if there were not other means provided to arrest the decline, or keep it from manifesting itself at all in a state of Nature.
“Now, it is wonderful how simple things are when once we know them; but it is more wonderfully simple how I find out that mystery. You recollect how I said my seeds were sown and labelled; it was by taking every pod or beak from the truss of a Geranium just before the seeds were quite ripe, and planting the pods round the sides of pots, like one row of cuttings. If the pod was full there would be five seedlings to every bunch of them as they appeared. My number for Baron Hugel is fifteen, and all seeds of the Baron have that number on the face of the tally, and the number of the pollen kind is cut on the edge of the same tally. Now, as my experimental seeds could never get mixed by this method, and, as often happened, the tally with fifteen on the face, and eighteen (Stella) on the edge, showed whole bunches of very stout seedlings, and other bunches with very delicate ones, as appeared to me. There is nothing in these things without a cause, if we did but know it; and I puzzled my brains for two or three years before I discovered the real cause, and I made some of the most foolish experiments you ever heard of in the trials; but as my system of tallying cross seedlings cannot err, and knowing Nature never does in these things, I must and at last did find out the thing, and I hope it will be useful to you. To me it is of more value, as confirming the possibility of the strongest pollen taking the lead on the stigma.”
Shortly after Beaton published this notice, Isaac Anderson-Henry (1861) reported that he had independently discovered the same to be true of Rhododendrons and their kin, and that crosses which routinely failed when pollen from several anthers were mingled on a brush, might succeed when only pollen from the short stamens was used. This was particularly useful in crossing large species onto smaller types.
As Beaton had observed, pollen from the longer stamens took the lead on the stigma. In Rhododendrons, there seems to be a timing issue. If the pollen tubes reach the ovules too soon, fertilization fails. But pollen from the short stamens of large species may reach the ovules of smaller species just in time, and the cross succeeds.
I’ve never gotten around to trying this on roses.
Karl
p.s. It was Beaton, by the way, who raised the first Sinningia hybrid and set the stage for the development of the modern Gloxinia.
[quote=jriekstins]
Of course this was written before ethanol or acetone were used as quick drying cleaners. Can pollen survive these types of treatments and still be viable?[/quote]
Hi Jackie!
No the pollen is killed as soon as the ethanol hits it. That’s why we use it.