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| Propagation, Culture, and Winter Care |
Selecting the Seed Parent. Now you must wait for nature to produce
for you a set of circumstances favorable for hybridization. First, the
bloom which is to be the seed parent must be freshly opened. You can
watch a particular bud for a few days and get a pretty good idea when
it is going to break into bloom. The day before it does, open the bud,
trim off its anthers, and keep the bud covered with cheesecloth to protect it from insects. As the bloom will open naturally in the forenoon,
it will be easy to catch. When the bloom opens, you will see a drop of
sticky nectar resting precisely in the middle of the stigma. Cover the
bloom with cheesecloth to keep out insects and wind-borne pollen, and
go get the pollen parent.
Selecting the Pollen Parent and Making the Cross. The
pollen parent you select must be a flower in its second day of blooming.
This is absolutely necessary, for the pollen on the flower's anthers is
not ripe and cannot be liberated from the anthers until the second day.
This flower, too, should have been spotted and protected from stray pollen by a covering of cheesecloth. With tweezers and a pair of manicure
scissors, snip off a couple of pollen-laden anthers and place them carefully, pollen-side down, upon the drop of nectar in the chosen seed
parent. The cross has now been made, but this is only the first of several
intricate steps in hybridization. If you are making a reciprocal cross, use
other flowers of the same species, in the same process, with the parental
roles reversed.
Protecting the Cross. Take a square of cheesecloth somewhat larger
than a man's handkerchief and cover the fertilized bloom to protect it
from further fertilization by insects or wind-borne pollen-and wait.
And wait and wait and wait. While you are waiting, it might be a good
idea to repeat the performance with other blooms as often as you can.
As I mentioned before, hardy water-lilies are reluctant to set seed, and
your chances of getting seed you can plant are, frankly, fairly poor.
Development of Seeds. In about a week, if the cross has been unsuccessful, seed pod and stem will begin to rot. If the hybridization "took,"
the seed pod will begin to swell after a couple of weeks, dropping beneath the water as it enlarges. Tie a string around the stem of the seed
parent, if you like, so you can pull it up and look at it occasionally. The
enlarging seed pod becomes the "fruit" of the water-lily. Two or three
days before it is completely ripe, it will rise to the surface again. Finally
it will burst, scattering the seeds.
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