Hybridizing Hints for Beginners 
First of all, in giving out with the following notes and ideas, I must stress the fact 
that they are just that—‘Notes and Ideas.” My likes and dislikes as to varieties and my 
ideas on hybridizing are things that may appear to be fine to me, but might seem of no 
value to someone else, Truthfully, one could write several books on “What I don’t 
know about Genetics, Chromosome counts, etc.,” so I am not by any means setting 
myself up as an authority on hybridizing. Iris fans of long ‘standing will of course know. 
all about “Crossing” but I hope the following notes will be of benefit to all of you brand 
aew initiates to Irisdom. 
First, decide what color you are going to strive for and then choose the best parents 
possible. Should you be working for blue, select the very bluest you have as parents 
and if they should have the other qualities you want such as form, substance, texture and 
size of flower, so much the better, for these things as well as stalk and branching 
should certainly not be overlooked. After you pass the novice or begnners stage you will 
become acquainted with many more varieties than you probably have at present. Then 
you will be able to check the ancestry of the iris you plan to use as “Parents” and know 
whether he particular traits you desire in the seedlings are dominant enough in the 
parent to give you a high percentage of the type you are striving for or possibly the 
‘ONE” you most want. 
Now for the technique of crossing. You will find that each flower has six petals. 
The three that extend out and downward are the Falls. And the three that are held 
upright are known as Standards. Peeping out from between each standard you will 
find a heavy, curved, near petal called the style or style arm. These usually have 
flaring, frilled “V” shaped tips that face out and up. Just where they spread back you 
will find a small lip or separation on the underside. This is the Stigma and it is on this 
Stigma that the pollen must be applied. By taking the tip of the Style in your fingers 
and gently curving it back you will cause the lip or Stigma to open wide making 
application of the pollen very easy. On a freshly opened flower you will find the surface 
of the Stigma to be porous and moist looking and as long as it stays in this condition you 
may be reasonably sure of a “take” when you make your cross. As the flower ages the 
moistness of the Stigma gives way to a hard, satiny look and its receptiveness to pollen 
is then poor. Now as to the pollen. This will be found on the underside of the style as the 
stamen curves right with the style and is held very snugly against it with the pollen 
sac at its tip. The pollen sac may best be removed by inserting tweezers into the 
throat opening between the standards and gently removing the whole stamen or part 
Stoit. 
In pollenizing a flower, you may do so successfully by applying the pollen to either 
one or all of the stigmas. I have had an equal amount of success either way. However, 
my records do show that in crosses made using but one stigma, 82 per cent of the pods 
have had a much smaller amount of seed than the pods set by using all three Stigmas. 
Therefore in working with difficult parents or in making special crosses I always apply 
pollen to all three, 
Pollen may be kept for as long as three weeks and still be usable. There are a 
number of ways in which you can store it. Small bottles, Capsules, boxes and folded 
papers or envelopes are all satisfactory. For my own use I prefer envelopes though 
I do not use many of these as I do try to use fresh pollen when it is possible. 
After making the cross, be sure and tag it properly. I use small Dennison marking 
tags, as I find it easy to get the string around the stem of the flower and draw the tag 
through. On the tag I write only the name of the pollen parent as I have found that 
writing the whole cross will some times lead to confusion if part of it should fade out and 
since the pod parent is always either numbered or named I will know that the one name 
on the tag is the pollen parent then. 
In recording the cross in your notebook I would like to suggest that you always 
record it “Pod” parent, crossed, “Pollen” parent. I believe this is usually done in most 
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