 |
|
|
|
|
Sometimes gardeners want to develop a new kind of flower or plant. They might like the colour of the flower on one plant, and the shape of the petals on another plant, and they want to combine the two features in a new plant or hybrid. If they are very very patient, they do this by hand pollinating.
When you hand pollinate, you often cut away the petals and just leave the sexual parts of the flower exposed. Then, using a very fine paintbrush, you can brush some of the pollen off the anther of one flower on the first plant, and then brush it gently on to the stigma of the flower on the second plant. Once this has been done, you need to cover the fertilized flower with a tightly tied bag, in order to prevent insects from messing up your experiment by spreading other sorts of pollen on the flower!
The gardener then carefully labels the flower with the names of the two parents, so that when the seed is collected, he or she knows exactly which plants were used to make the new plant.
This all sounds very easy to do, but in fact you have to do the same thing hundreds and hundreds of times, and grow generation after generation of seeds in order to develop a new kind of plant that comes true from seed. (That means that the seeds always grow the same kind of flower, and it doesn't go back to looking like one of the parents instead.)
In New Zealand, we have some well-known people who have developed some wonderful new plants. Terry Hatch, who lives just over in Pukekohe, has developed some wonderful colours of nerines. Mark Jury has grown amazing varieties of magnolia, and Dr Keith Hammett is famous for his work with dahlias. All these people have worked for many many years to make their contribution to developing new hybrids.