Pollination

In the midst of doing some pollinations in the greenhouse. I've been using 'Doreen's Colossus' as the father on 3 other plants so far: (oreophila x willisii) x open-pollinated, 'Tapestry', and leucophylla x flava rubricorpora. The last two should yield some nice looking plants, I think. The cross with the (oreophila x willisii) x OP, I'm not so sure what I'll get out of that. Probably just some large, mostly green oreophila-looking pitchers. Both plants don't have much color to them, but there was nothing else to pollinate it with at the time. I guess there could always be some surprises. Being open-pollinated, I have no idea what the father was. I'm guessing it was self-pollinated, but you never know. Also, with 'willisii' in the genetics, there's always a possibility of getting a more decumbent pitcher. Time will tell.

First Flowers of the Year

Paid another visit to the greenhouse on this Super Bowl Sunday. Being a huge Packers fan, I needed something to calm the nerves, so a visit to the greenhouse was the perfect remedy. I was happy to see germination in just about every pot of seeds I had sown this fall/winter. Also, the first flowers have opened up. First is the open-pollinated oreophila x willisii shown in the previous post. It has some interesting lobes on a few of the petals. Not sure if this is a genetic thing, or just due to environmental factors:


The other flowers to have opened up are 'Doreen's Colossus', a flava x oreophila hybrid:

I crossed the 2 plants, using 'Doreen's Colossus' as the pollen donor on the open-pollinated oreophila x willisii.
My last order of business for the day was discarding 1-year-old seedlings that were deceased, which turned out to be more than I had thought. I'd say roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the pots had dead plants in them. Here is a pic of the empty pots following the mass burial:

There are still a lot of seedlings left, so I am not too upset, although I did lose 100% of several crosses that had potential. On the bright side, this frees up some space, and pots, which are in short supply.
There should be several more flowers open by next weekend. I will have to invest in some paintbrushes.