I've written here before about my little experiments with hybridizing Moraeas. I made some progress this year, and wanted to do an update. The Moraeas are some of my favorite bulbs, because they are easy to grow in my part of California, and their colors are spectacular, especially the so-called "Peacock" Moraeas like M. villosa. I've now grown most of the commonly-available Peacocks, and I was running out of interesting new Moraeas to try. So I decided I should make some hybrids. I was inspired in part by Moraea "Zoe," created by Bill Dijk, which has some of the most extravagant stripes of any bulb flower: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…. Dirk Wallace has also posted photos of a few lust-inducing hybrids, such as this one: http://bgbulbs.com/cpt/displayimage.php/… Many of my crosses failed in the first couple of years, and I also wasted several years growing seeds that turned out to be self-pollinated. The answer to the self-pollination was to emasculate the flowers (a very tedious task involving tweezers and a steady hand). To counter the low rate of success, I eventually learned to whenever possible to use pollen right after it has been harvested. Just pull the anthers off one flower and rub them on another. Of course that doesn't work if the plants you're crossing do not bloom at the same time, so I often have to freeze pollen for later use. I store it in old plastic film canisters; they work nicely. I learned the hard way that every trip those canisters make out of the freezer reduces their fertility. If you're attempting crosses over a several-month period with one container of pollen, your later crosses are less likely to succeed because you have thawed the pollen too many times. To help counter that, I put the pollen containers in a small insulated sack that keeps them cold when they're out of the freezer. In the last couple of years I've started to have more success. I now have six lines of hybrids working: 1. Moraea neopavonia x atropunctata, which looks almost exactly like M. neopavonia. Surprisingly, the heavy spots of M. atropunctata are nowhere to be seen. 2. #1 crossed with M. villosa, which produces big pale orange flowers with purple spots on the back (apparently from M. atropunctata) and sometimes very large nectar guides. 3. Moraea aristata x #1, which produces two types of flower. One is pale orange with very small nectar guides. The other looks like a light yellow version of M. aristata, very pretty but unfortunately low fertility (it's hard to get them to set seeds, and their pollen looks like dried paint rather than powder). 4. Moraea aristata x M. calcicola, which produces pale blue flowers with slight veining. Unfortunately, these are also low fertility. 5. Moraea atropunctata x M. calcicola, which makes pale blue flowers with purple spots on them. Cool! 6. Moraea neopavonia x M. villosa, a large orange flower with big dark nectar guides. I've also been growing M. aristata x loubseri, courtesy of Bob Werra. Thanks, Bob! You can see pictures of the hybrids here: http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/… The nice thing about the flowers is that none of them are ugly. I've managed to make some very ugly Gladiolus hybrids in the last couple of years (muddy colors and low bud counts), but that doesn't seem to happen with the Moraeas so far. The color combinations are very nice, and many of the plants are extremely vigorous, with high numbers of buds and a blooming period that can stretch for two months or longer. I have about 15 more crosses that should reach blooming size in the next two years. This year, now that I've finally figured out how to improve my success rate, I went overboard and attempted about 200 more crosses between the hybrids above, and with various Moraea species. Maybe a third of those set seed, so I'm going to have a lot of planting to do this fall. Some crosses that failed: Unfortunately, almost all crosses between the Peacocks and M. polystachya fail. That's a disappointment because I would love to get M. polystachya's vigor crossed with the colors of the Peacocks. It's possible that I got a couple of crosses this year, but they may have just been accidental self-pollination. I'll know when the plants reach blooming size, in three years. M. macronyx and M. vegeta will not cross with any of the Peacocks. They are not closely related to the Peacocks, so this failure was expected. Crosses between Dietes and Moraea also generally failed. Not a surprise, but it was worth a try. ;-) Is anyone else out there experimenting with Moraea hybrids? If so, I'd be glad to compare notes with you. I'm also willing to trade seeds of my crosses, and the few offsets that my hybrid bulbs have started to form. Please e-mail me privately if you're interested. Thanks, Mike San Jose, CA (min temp 20F / -7 C)