Here is a great photo by Patty, showing membrane covering the pollen. You want to bag the stalk by/before this stage, or the membrane will split exposing the pollen and all the little creatures will feast on it before you can use it.

So glad I bagged some flowers as it rained here last night and night before.

You got rain Jo Ann? Real rain? We got clouds then sun, no rain. Tomorrow should be 89, possible 90 degrees.
I watered tonight to give the plants more time to let the moisture dry from their leaves.

Yep... real rain and 2 days of nice cool temps till afternoon but Sunday may be over 100 so here we go again. The hottest it got in Texas when I was there was 103 F.
I have all the semps that i want to x set in the pairs or groups that I want to cross with each other. Have bags over some and yes there is more pollen under the bag. I am getting help from some small bumble bees. There do not seem to be any honey bees around here. I have watched the bees going from flower to flower and when the plants are in groups, the bees do work the group. But of course they can fly to another group and take pollen with them. I was curious whether there is any seed forming from this open pollination so I found an immature but brown seed pod on one that I do not want to save seed from and opened it. Sure enough ...some seed already forming but I needed a magnifying glass to see it. I am going to have to rely on the bees for some seed this year, as I was gone for a whole week. Then every week I am gone at least 3 days at market during the time when I should be doing the crosses. In the evening the stigma do not seem to be receptive. I am going to check early tomorrow morning before I leave at 8 am. I think it may still be too cold.
Is any one else keeping seed from bee crosses?

I think Kevin said something about going out around 9:00 in the morning to do crosses.
@JungleShadows Kevin is that correct?

I do keep the seed from bee crosses, Jo Ann. I usually have multiple crossings on one stalk but never have all flowers hand pollinated. All my plants have numbers as my crossings do. Seeds from bee pollination are labelled with plant number and x (e.g. 64x) to clearly separate them from seeds originating from hand pollination. Any flower that is not labelled with a crossing number will automatically go into the plant number x bag after harvesting.
Both types of seed are sown out and cared for in the same way, but hand-pollinated seedlings are preferred if it comes to space limitations...

Lynn,

I like ~9 AM here in Oregon as the pollen is nice and fluffy and the stigmas are very receptive. However, if the stalks are kept under bags the flowers are available all day.

Pollinated the last flowers on Lion King yesterday. Each stalk had over 200 flowers so I should be able to plant an acre of seedlings from that one alone! My only regret was one of those two very dark purple seedlings that were so admired at the clinic are just starting to bloom. However, I still have flowers of Patent Leather Shoes and Borscht to use. Think all of these combinations could be good.

Kevin

Yes, It's the 9 am that is difficult for me when I leave for market at 7 or 8 am.
Good to know about the bagged ones. Kevin, can you keep pollen in the refrigerator or freezer. I have done this with crocosmia and hellebores. With all the flowers we have this year, I guess that might be redundant

JoAnn,

I have kept pollen in the refrigerator. I use what are called "microfuge tubes" as they are what I would use to store my antibodies at work. They come in neat little racks. I would decant the pollen into them and store them in their little carrier in the refrigerator, adding a bit of Silica Gel to the bottom of the box to keep things dry. When I'd want to use one, I'd pull out the vial, and let it come to room temperature. use a fine camel's hair brush to remove some pollen from the tube and use that to pollinate your flowers.

This year there is NO shortage of flowers. I just made over 100 pollinations this morning and that's just the tip of the iceberg of what's blooming. This morning I used one of those huge near blacks (E129-2) on a bunch of things, including 'Patent Leather Shoes'. Those could be fun.

Kevin

Thanks Kevin. The tubes sound great. I just used little glassine envelopes that are intended for stamp collectors.
"Huge near black on Patent Leather Shoes" ...............heading toward football sized black. ..... I can see it coming

That's it - pollination is over for this year. Only two flowering cultivars ('Talisman' and 'Tickled Pink') left that have already been crossed forth and back. Just put 'Tickled Pink' pollen on the last 'Plastic' flower. Now I'm waiting for the seeds to ripen and the stalks being ready for harvesting.

Can't wait to see what you get from the 'Plastic' cross Michael.
We are still in the thick of blooming season here. All the arachnoideum are about done, a lone bloom here and there. It looks like I might have a few very late bloomers this year. I always worry that the seed won't ripen on the late ones.

I'm getting some late bloomers too. I think I can see three that are just now coning.

Same here Tim. I am worried that my 'Generaal' might be doing that, with all the un-rooted offsets still attached.

Have most of my crossing done too. There are over 300 sets on the stalks of Lion King alone, all crossed with Black Lotus. Lion King went on Black Lotus and also a couple of cobwebs. Can you imagine a cobweb the size of Lion King?? The mind boggles!

Persephone's stalk was crossed with Borscht and my favorite dark purple seedling was spread on Borscht, Patent Leather Shoes and Watermark King.

A couple late stalks are coming but I'm not sure if I want to use them in crosses.

It will be fun in '19 to see what all these different combinations generate!

Kevin

Kevin I find it hard to imagine a cob web half as big as Lion King and my Lion King are still small. A cob web with those markings would sure be cool.

Today I harvested the last flower stalks and found both normal looking seed heads (first photo) as well as odd looking heads on my most favourite NOID. The latter promising some extra seed in either more or bigger pods. Never seen these odd seed heads completely filled by seed pods on other sempervivum...and yes, there are aphids on my favourite NOID (second photo)...

Great seed pod photos Michael. Where the blooms normal?

All flowers looked normal, but the petals were curved inwards and the flowers looked like they were not completely open. Rarely found (very little) pollen on the flowers, even if covered with a bag. Just used the stalks as pollen receivers, I love the colour on this one and would want to see it on some of next year's seedlings. There were more than 100 flowers and the seed pods look like they contain a fair amount of seeds. I'm hoping for some nice seedlings next year.

I am really looking forward to the results next year.