Pollinating Chamaedorea adscendens

[Tracy]

I have never attempted to pollinate any of my Chamaedoreas.  I was interested in when and how best to achieve pollination.  I have a couple of Chamaedorea adscendens which are male, and one female.  While they have been in close proximity in pots, I don't believe that I have the natural pollinators here to do the job, but I may be wrong.  My assumption is that I will need to be the pollinator.  How do I know when the male pollen is "fertile" or too far gone, and the same question for the females.  I have seen the seeds on the adscendens for years, but never notice them flowering.  The female plant with two different flower spikes.

[Tracy]

And some old flower spikes on a male C adscendens.  The male plants have new flower spikes which have yet to open.  The males are much more prolific than the female plant at pushing out flower spikes.  While I'm at it, I'll ask if anyone has tried pollinating C metalica females with C adscendens?

[Kai]

I have been succesfull in pollinating 2 female metallica's with pollen of the same species and got viable seeds out of it. I used a cotton stick that I first brushed against the male flowers and then tapt all the female flowers with it. Not all flowers took but I consider my experiment a succes as I got about 10 seedlings now.

A second attempt failed however. Presumably because the timing was not as perfect as the first attempt.

Good luck!

[gyuseppe]

Manual hybridization does not always succeed, I have successfully hybridized my female  phoenix roebelenii  with reclinata and dactylifera, perfectly successful hybridization,while I failed to hybridize my female  phoenix roebelenii  with  rupicola and  loureiroi,hybridization failed

[Pal Meir]

The pollination of Ch metallica is very easy. (And I made many babies  with pinnate (!) leaves.) But even if the pollination of hybrids may be easy the success is another question. I once pollinated a female Ch elegans with Ch metallica pollen and enjoyed the many nice »fruits« developing on the mother tree. And when I picked up later the »ripe fruits« I felt at once that they were all hollow …

[Pal Meir]

Another problem may be that they belong to different subgenera: Ch adscendens to Chamaedoropsis and Ch metallica to Eleutheropetalum.

[XYZ]

This is a very striking and easily grown palm palm that seems a bit underappreciated by growers. There are a couple different distinct ecotypes across the range, with the best-looking ones occurring in the lowland wet forests of NW Guatemala. Plants in cultivation probably all originated from Belize. They are spottily distributed along a narrow band from extreme southeastern Chiapas to southern Belize, but can be very common understory plants where they do occur.

I have never been very keen on hybridizing chamaedoreas because most of the species that I have worked with are endangered to a greater or lesser degree. Nonetheless, I have done a few on a lark, including (if memory serves) this one: C. rojasiana x C. adscendens. Sadly, with one exception, I never kept proper notes on these crosses since hybrids were nothing more than a curiosity. I have attached a photo of a community pot of these hybrids that I gave to a friend some years back. The photo was taken in his garden in late June 2013. Nothing particularly remarkable and somewhat reminiscent of C. verapazensis, which actually makes sense. There are three flowering-sized palms growing together in the pot, with the plant partially visible in the upper left of the image showing leaf texture and color most like C. adscendens. Leaf texture in these plants is very thick, also like C. adscendens. The cupped terminal leaflets that are often conspicuous in that species are evident in the center plant.

 

 

The parents were bifid (simple) leaf forms of the species as adults, but both species normally carry several pairs of pinnae when mature. This characteristic dominated in the offspring.

I used a clean, high-quality watercolor brush and fresh pollen. Fruit set was OK but, as mentioned elsewhere, seed viability was dismal.

Pal is correct in pointing out that intersectional crosses in chamaedoreas have proved challenging to make but they have been done on rare occasions, including at least one by another forum member.

Cheers,

J

 

[Tracy]

2 hours ago, stone jaguar said:

I used a clean, high-quality watercolor brush and fresh pollen.

I presume when you say fresh pollen, you mean literally collecting from a male plant and going directly over to the female to pollinate it.  That as opposed to collecting it and waiting for the female plant to be receptive.  I'm hoping that one of the male stalks will actually be ready when one of the female stalks is receptive.  It seems in the past, they are always just a little out of sync, which leads me back to one of my questions if you can advise or share photos.

On 11/2/2016, 10:48:57, Tracy said:

How do I know when the male pollen is "fertile" or too far gone, and the same question for the females.

My hope would be to propagate more of the C adscendens to create a mini dense understory planting in an area of my garden.  As Chamaedoreas go, this has such a uniquely thick leatherly type leaf.

[XYZ]

Yes, that's exactly what I meant.The impulse to hybridize on that occasion was driven entirely by having synched reproductive plants of these species at hand in the garden while I was working with other chamaedoreas. Receptive females will have the tips of the flower "valves' (petals) open and the stigma visible, sometimes with glistening stigmatic fluid evident.

Anthesis in C. adscendens is short but hopefully you can store an inflorescence for a few days in a paper bag if you're just a bit miss-timed with female flowers. I agree that sticking to producing pure seed of the species makes far more sense than trying your hand at hybridization first time out of the gate.

There is an excellent, relatively recent paper available online, coauthored by Donald Hodel, that provides an exhaustive summary of flower morphology in chamaedoreas. I recommend everyone interested in breeding chamaedoreas to download it:

http://rjb.revistas.csic.es/index.php/rjb/article/viewFile/292/287

J

[Tracy]

22 minutes ago, stone jaguar said:

There is an excellent, relatively recent paper available online, coauthored by Donald Hodel, that provides an exhaustive summary of flower morphology in chamaedoreas. I recommend everyone interested in breeding chamaedoreas to download it:

http://rjb.revistas.csic.es/index.php/rjb/article/viewFile/292/287

 

Gracias Señor!

[Tracy]

On 11/3/2016, 11:57:05, stone jaguar said:

Anthesis in C. adscendens is short but hopefully you can store an inflorescence for a few days in a paper bag if you're just a bit miss-timed with female flowers. I agree that sticking to producing pure seed of the species makes far more sense than trying your hand at hybridization first time out of the gate.

Just noticed that I had the potential of pollinating my C adscendens, so moved these two pots to put them in close proximity.  I don't know, but I may be too late on the female plant?

[Patrick]

I shared this the other day as well. Pal Meir has some great input, but if you insist on doing it yourself read the procedure from Dick Douglas in the above thread

[Tracy]

I'm wondering if the seeds below appear like the fertilized seeds or unfertilized seeds of Chamaedorea adscendens?  While everyone has been helpful in sharing information regarding the process of fertilizing and the link from Patrick was helpful, none of the photos or information I read was specific to this species, only Chamaedoreas in general or other species within the genus (identifying when the female flowers are receptive visually, when the male pollen is "ready").  As noted in a photo above, I placed a pair of plants which appeared close to fertile so that pollen would be dropping on my female flowers, then also gave it an "assist" by dragging the male flowers across the female.

On 6/7/2017, 12:01:45, Tracy said:

Just noticed that I had the potential of pollinating my C adscendens, so moved these two pots to put them in close proximity.  I don't know, but I may be too late on the female plant?

Anyone with thoughts about whether I should be collecting these seeds?

[Phoenikakias]

Tracy, I bet that those fruits are empty.of viable seeds. Sorry.

[Steve Mac]

Yes, I have seen seed like that too - useless. Squeeze one you will see. If there is a seed in it, plant it, no harm done. 

Then you see a fertilized one you will see the difference, it is 10 times bigger.

[Tracy]

4 hours ago, gtsteve said:

Squeeze one you will see. If there is a seed in it, plant it, no harm done. 

Then you see a fertilized one you will see the difference, it is 10 times bigger.

Thanks!  That is the type feedback I was hoping for!

[Phoenikakias]

5 hours ago, Tracy said:

Thanks!  That is the type feedback I was hoping for!

Just to get an idea; this is a faulty substitute of a seed in an effectively non pollinated Rhapis fruit. This is how would look like also such a seed substitute from a Chamaedorea fruit.

[Phoenikakias]

Sometimes even 'normal' Chamaedorea fruit is seedless. This is the case in the following pictures showing fruits from  a Chamaedorea specimen I tried to cross pollinate. The big, round fruit had a... deflated or smashed seed.

[Tracy]

The male and female plants are just out of sync.  The female is further along than my male Chamaedorea adscendens.  Looks like I will have plenty of pollen, but after the female is receptive.  I have another male plant which will be producing more pollen after this male, but no sign of more female inflorescence after this one.