You will have the answer, but you have to wait for three to four years.

Lol!

You would have to plant a few acres of seeds from both crosses,in order to tell the difference between wide variety,which occurs when crossing two cultivars,and what would occur when one or the other was the female or male parent.
Del

Do you guys recommend crossing both ways? I already did, but I'd like to know what you do.

First of all, you will get different results using only one flower as the female. If you have siblings, think of your own situation. You all have the same parents, but every child is different. Same with seeds. With the same male and female flowers you will get different results every time. That is because different traits are passed on each time a cross is made. Don't think just because you've "done" a cross, you know what it will always look like. It can be different the next time. (And always keep in mind, as pointed out on this forum before, that temperature, light, soil and other factors have a significant effect on how the flower on the same bulb appears from year to year.)

Now, is there a difference which flower you use as the female? Only if there are sex-linked genes. I do not know if amaryllis have sex-linked genes or not.

Have fun! Doing the crosses and raising the seedlings is one of the most exciting parts of growing amaryllis! Yes, you have to wait three years or so to see the results, but if you do crosses, harvest and plant seeds every year, you have new surprises every year!

What a cool thing to do!

Carol

I had crossed H.papilio ( a DIPloid) and "Pink Floyd" (a DIP, too) in either direction.
I obtained very different flowers.
But, I would not perceive a systematic difference in the appearance between the two groups of seedlings.
I presume that generally it will not matter. And, often you will find that you are confined to one of the combinations, bcz one parent in prospection does not produce seeds.

HOWEVER!
When it comes to particular unusual crosspollination projects such as
1) DIP x TET
and you actually succeed in performing the reverse
2) TET x DIP (this is very unlikely...)
then you MIGHT receive TETs from 1) [I actually obtained this result with DIP=H.papilio] and you will receive TRIploids from 2) and then these will look different.

So basically, the more seeds, the more new types you'll see. ...I'm going to need a bigger house!

Now you know what you are getting in to.
Welcome to Amry-lunatic Club.
Arif

the more seeds...

It is a good idea to sow "all that you have" - you do not know the germination rate, that you should consider this in the 1st place! And later, you can pick the very best and fastest growing seedlings with the broasdswet leaves, the most numerous leaves and the biggest bulbs. If I had too many really good seedlings on hand - and if I actually could not decide to discard the VAST majority, then I would plant 16 specimens, in two 8-lines, into a 50- or 60 cm balcony box, and about 30, in three 10-lines into a second balcony box. I would provide the 16-box with the very BEST place in order to obtain maiden blooms ASAP. If the outcome is a failure then you will be glad that you dedicated your best place for one box only. But if the maiden blooms are spectacular and they might even indicate a lukky major coup, from your genius of intuiton then you will be VERY glad that you have that second 30-box up on your "sleeve" or should I be saying "ambuscade".

You can not get a better advice.

There is a difference between crossing species & crossing hybrids. If you cross species, the seedlings will be 50% of each parent (in most cases, I think there is also an impact of the length of the DNA string - just think of the crosses of hippeastrum with Sprekelia which still look very much like Sprekelia because Sprekalia has 2N = 120, far more than any Hippeastrum species. Or there may be sometimes (more) dominant charactersitics as seen in all the Cybister hybrids where the cybister flower shape is really obvious in all crosses, and similalry for Papillo hybrids). When you cross species, the plant used as 'female' (so receiving the pollen) will be a bit more 'present' in the cross, so this may guide someone about how to make the cross in function of the desired output.
Now, if you cross hybrids, you may end up with each seed providing something completely different. Simply because the hybrids have in their DNA a mix of characteristics inherited from their parentage, but when the DNA gets split during the production of the pollen or the egg-cells, there is no memory of which part of the DNA originally came from 'where', so basically everything gets randomly mixed up. So, eventually you may get one seedling being a nice intermediate between the two hybrids, while some other seedlings will show more ressemblance to the parentage of the hybrids or even provide combinations that you would not even have suspected to be included in your parent bulbs. But this should not discourage you of making crosses, usually these seedlings are extremely fast & rewarding growers and you may just create your own new striking hybrid.

I found the nicest thing that may happen is even without cross breeding you could get more than one color. At least that is what happened for me. I did not even know how to pollinate but still ended up with 3 different colors by accident.