Question by Mary: How do people hybridize roses?
I was just curious how people create different types of roses. Like the ones that are multicolored and have stripe like patterns. How do they do it?
Best answer:
Answer by daylily
This is from the first of the sites below, although they all give lots of information:
“Hybridizing begins by artificially pollinating a variety with pollen from a different variety. Selecting these parents is very important. Start your pollinating program when the first blooms appear in the spring, and try to get all your pollinating done during the first cycle of bloom. The seed on some varieties will not mature in the northern states when the second blooming cycle is pollinated.
Be in the garden by seven o’clock in the morning if possible. Remove the petals from the buds that will open into full-blown blooms by noon of that day. By leaving five of the outer, or lower petals, it is easy to locate them when you return to place the pollen on them.
After removing the petals, remove the stamens (male part of the bloom that surrounds the pistil). Be careful not to injure the pistil (female part) in the center of the bloom, which is made up of more than a dozen stigmas.
The pollen sacs can be collected in a small jar lid and spread on a sheet of typing paper indoors away from the wind and sun for a day while the pollen sacs ripen and spill their pollen. The pollen can be separated from the sacs by screening. I used a fine tea strainer until I made a special screen by cutting a large hole in the tops of two baby food jar lids, placing a piece of fine screen between them and then soldering them together. The baby food jars are then screwed on, and the pollen screened by shaking just as you would a salt shaker.
The success of pollinating depends on placing the pollen on the stigmas at the proper time. This is determined by looking through a magnifying glass. On each stigma a sticky fluid exudes, usually in the afternoon after emasculation. Sometimes it happens the following day. When the sticky nectar appears on the stigmas, it is time to apply the pollen.
This pollen appears to the naked eye as a yellow powder, but it is actually tiny vegetative capsules filled with liquid male sperm. This sperm is released by the stimulating effect of the sticky fluid that exudes on the stigma, which dissolves the vegetative capsule, and the sperm spills onto the stigma, reacting to the chemical attracting stimuli of the egg cell, and later enters the egg cell where fertilization of the egg nucleus by the pollen nucleus takes place.
I prefer a quarter inch fine-haired artist’s brush for applying the pollen. It must be cleaned each time a different pollen is used. A pipe cleaner is also a good applicator, and can be discarded each time you change to pollen of a different rose variety. Place a label around the neck of the bloom with the name of the seed bearing (mother) parent first, then the pollen parent (father). Cover with a white paper bag to protect against water, sun and insects. Leave the cover on four days.”
www.rosehybridizers
www.rosehybridizers.org/howto.html
www.rdrop.com/~paul/breeding.html
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