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Orchid pollination

glider14

Always a newbie
hello,
i got an orchid from Meijer's. its a phalaenopisis___. its yellow and star-shaped with redish purple flecking on the inside and the part that sticks out is oragneish(says how much i know about orchids) BTW ill get pics as soon as i get home
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first off id like an ID please. second i would like to know how orchids can be pollinated.
thanks
alex
 
Hello Alex. have you got someone to flask the orchid seeds up for you? Or are you going to attempt it yourself? Its not like anyother seeds you have ever done. They need to be started in flasks with an agar under sterile conditions. Orchid seeds do not have an endo sperm so the need the nutrients from the agar to get them started. In the wild orchid seeds have a relationship with a fungus to get its nutrients until its old enough to make food for itself. If your still wanting to polinate look at the collum. Orchid sex organs are all on the same structure. if you find the lip on the phal you will see another protruding apendage above it that makes the shape of a "C" with the lip being the bottom of the "C". Now ar the tip of the top of the C you will see what loops like a ittle cap. behind that cap will be two pollin pods. Polliana (sp), but they look like male genitles. Hence the name Orchids. Anywho take those two pollin pods and now further in the "C" you will see what looks like a sticky spot just behind where you harvested the pollin. The pollin wil get stuck there in the sticky spot. Thats it. The ovary shoul start to swell in a few weeks and the flower will die. If you can't figure this out I will try to take a picture totorial for you or copy one from out of my books I have.
 
do you know somewharer i could send the seed to be flasked?
 
Well Troy myers will do them for a fee since they are not species plants. If it were known that it was a species and you did a self he would flask it for free and send you a flask with about 25 plants for shipping and he will sell the rest of the plants, but since its a hybred you will have to pay to get the seeds flasked with him. There is other places that can flask too just need to do a google search for flasking services. There is a guy that sells a book online that speaks about flasking with a cornstarch mix and its in a semisterile condition. The seeds take longer to grow, but you do not need all the stuff to make it sterile. I had a copy of the ebook, but I lost it off my jumpdrive. It was only like 10 bucks. The book is called flasking orchids for pennies in you kitchen or something like that. I am going to be trying my hands at flasking again when a spontaniopus pod fully developes on a NoID I have. My school will let me use its flow hood again and autoclaves. I didn't have luck the first time I flasked. I had some contamination and seeds were just old and didn't germinate. If you go to the Orchid source forum there may be someone there who flasks that will be willing to flask them for you. I sent someone my left over gongora seed last year and they were growing nicely. Many things to try and you may like doing it. Just not like planting reg seeds is what I wanted you to get out of it. Just a little different.
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