Brunsvigia marginata in bloom

Michael Mace mikemace@att.net
Tue, 28 Sep 2010 22:36:18 PDT
Since everyone's posting about their Brunsvigias, I wanted to mention that I
took some photos as my Brunsvigia marginata bloomed for the first time
during the last four weeks.  I posted them to the wiki here:

http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…

(Scroll down to the B. marginata section; my pictures are at the bottom of
that section.)

The flower head is now just about finished.  As it matured, I systematically
removed every anther as it opened (to harvest the pollen) and then
hand-pollinated every floret.  Most of the crosses were with Amaryllis
hybrids, and it's looking like at least some of them took.  I also
pollinated some florets with Nerine sarniensis pollen, but it's too early to
tell if that worked.

My other unnatural pollination exercise for the fall was that I crossed
Amaryllis and B. marginata onto Haemanthus barkerae.  I didn't really expect
that to work since the plants are so different in size -- it's like breeding
a chihuahua with a Great Dane.  But to my great surprise, it's looking like
some of those crosses may have worked as well.

Mike
San Jose, CA


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