Steve2020 said: 'White henryii' x 'Ice Follies' has only a few viable embryos, and these look quite poor. Interestingly, my 'Anastasia' had wonderful pods - these are on the left - from open pollination, but the pods that have split seem to have only chaff. 'Scheherazade' did the same. I presume this makes the case for embryo rescue? I have several Orienpets nearby that might have generated the initial pollination, but the size of the pods implies that, with the right pollen-parent, I should be able to achieve some successful crosses next year. I will sift through the chaff to see if anything seems viable.
I will add several comments.
1) White Henryi x Ice Follies is a diploid (2N) x tetraploid (4N) cross and while possible is very difficult and not surprising you didn't get much and the embryos look poor. If these grow it could produce triploids or tetraploids (only if White Henryi produced unreduced gametes) and be interesting as potentially strong growers if you get them to germinate. In general crossing diploids to diploids and tetraploids to tetraploids will produce more seed.
2) Anastasia and Scheherazade are difficult parents - both are triploid. Many have tried to produce seedlings from them. Scheherazade can make a few seeds with fertile tetraploid OT/Trumpet but the seeds have very poor germination. I have flowered one seedling from an embryo rescued Scheherazade embryo - it grew weakly and was not a great seedling. Others have produced seedlings as well from Scheherazade. Anastasia is another matter - it is much more difficult to get seed/embryos from. I know of only a few - one grown from seed by Joe and another I have growing in tissue culture. Anastasia is 2/3 oriental genes and likely needs tetraploid oriental pollen to increase probability of producing seed and as there are no tetraploid orientals around that I know of that would be difficult to prove. It is not unusual for lilies to produce OP pods and not unusual for OT's to produce large OP pods full of chaff. Best bet on these is to used known fertile mixed OT pollen and pollinating several consecutive days to increase chance of getting seed but I would recommend ER for any crosses on these lilies.
3) Embryo Rescue is as the name suggests - just collecting embryos from green seed pods. The embryos have to be there or there is nothing to rescue. If you look through chaff - you will find some that have dead embryos present - you can still see the embryo it is just shrunken and dead. These are the seeds with embryos that embryo rescue can be useful to save. When doing ER you find all different presentations of the embryos - most often there are none. Some pods have seeds that appear they would develop normally with endosperm and normal size embryos. Some are have no embryo but have partially or fully formed endosperm and others have no endosperm but a bare embryo inside the seed coat. Most often there is both - half formed endosperm that is hiding an embryo. The embryos can be normal to extremely tiny - like just a round dot the size of a period. To be honest the tiny ones are killer hard to find and to handle but you try your best. I use a very bright light from beneath the seed to try to look for embryos but often times the embryo is hiding in the partially formed endosperm and you need to carefully pull it apart looking for hidden embryos. The color and texture of the embryo is different from the endosperm which allows them to be found in the dissected seed.
When doing embryo rescue - you open the green pods 40 to 60 days after pollination. Pods have 6 sections/rows of seed/chaff. I cut the pod into 3 sections length wise where each section has the dividing membrane in the middle with a row of seeds on each side. As you look at the row of seeds it is like a roll or stack of coins and you are looking for the thick ones. Using the coin analogy, most would look like a dime - very thin and smaller diameter and the thicker ones would be more like a nickel - more than twice as thick and larger diameter. When on ovule has an embryo that forms, it releases growth regulators causing the seed to expand and develop like a normal seed and those that don't have an embryo grow but not the same and stay thin and are the chaff. There was a comment about lumpy pods - this is what happens when most of the pod is chaff but there are a few seeds trying to develop - imagine stretching film over a stack of coins of various sizes - this is what it is like inside the pod. The lumps sticking out are the highest likely area to find embryos.
Too bad this discussion is buried in an 8 yr old thread with thousands of responses instead of its own thread which would be easier to find in the future.
