Trible, is this plant a Polish or Ukrainian hybrid? They tend to be more difficult to cross pollinate.

As for pollination, the best time to pollinate a strep is when the flower has been open for about 5 days. However, from speaking to many hybridizers it is best to use a Polish, Ukrainian or Russian hybrid as the pollen parent not as the seed or mother parent. Many of these plants are sterile but will produce viable pollen.

Dave G.

Dave,
Is there anyway to know off the top if a hybrid is sterile? That's actually fairly profound to me, and perhaps to other newbies!

Best,
Judy

Judy,

The misshaped stigma began with Silvia, a Swedish hybrid that was used a great deal in hybridizing, as it was one of the very first bi-color streps. There are many Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian hybrids with this same misshaped stigma. Unless you have seen where someone has already discussed a certain hybrid having this anomaly, you won't know which ones have it until you see it bloom. In Europe, Russia, and Ukraine, they use the term "silvan"... to describe streps of Silvia descent that have this.

Karen