Hello,
I just entered the forum and found this the best thread to place my questions.
Having watched Kevin's clinic videos on youtube early this summer, I decided to give organized sempervivum hybridisation a try.
Armed with a pair of pointy tweezers I did bee's work from May to late July and criss-crossed Sempervivum to Sempervivum and Jovibarba (all non-heuffelii types). As bees rarely visit our balcony on the fourth floor, nobody interfered with my organized work.
Most of my types are NOIDs as you call them here, that is why I gave a number to each type and cross to allow for traceability lateron.
In nearly all Jovibarba flowers I found compact, dense pollen, that was nearly impossible to transfer to other flowers. In my Sempervivum flowers the pollen was light and fluffy and easy to spread from one anther to several stigma of the receiving plant. Also development of the stigma took much longer in Jovibarba than in Sempervivum (here the characteristic white 'plate' on top of the style was shown on the second day as described by Kevin in his videos). Is this normally the case or are my Jovibarba simply non-fertile hybrids?
As pollen transfer in Jovibarba provided difficulties I mostly used Jovibarba as receiving plants to do my Sempervivum x Jovibarba crosses.
I found a lot of contradicting information on the net about this topic:
Provided both parents are fertile themselves is there any chance these crosses will produce viable seeds (and offspring?)?
Today I harvested most of my seed heads and put them in seperate paper bags, I only left those outside that are not yet completely dry. I already saw a large number of seeds (hopefully mature and viable). I'm looking forward to next spring - or maybe I will give winter sowing a try, although these milk jugs are not common in Germany - would transparent plastic bottles also do the job or is the material too thin to keep of cold temperatures?
Have a nice evening,
Michael
