I have been told that caerulea with incense yields good fruit. I haven't done it myself. Caerulea is easy to find.

Caerulea is a good place to start- You might try the edulis varieties as well. I'd have a look at Lowe's or Home Depot as they usually have *something*. Get the 1 gallon pot if you can- They flower at that size, and given a good home & a few months they grow to the 5 gallon size rather quickly.

I tried polinating my incense with no luck.. Nothing I tried "took", but I have heard that it's possible so I suspect I simply have a sterile vine. It happens.

Maypop, P. incarnata should work and will be hardy in your zone. I have pollinated my 'Incense' with wild incarnata pollen over the past few days. Still waiting to see if fruit sets.

About 10 days ago I pollinated an Incense flower with incarnata pollen, and it took. The fruit has grown rapidly. I've tried several times to pollinate Incense with caerulea but have never had luck setting fruit with that cross for some reason.

Good luck!

-Jon

Jon,

Do you recall the time of day when you did the pollination? I have been trying to pollinate Incense with incarnata for several days, but so far, no fruit set. The problem may be that I can't do the pollination until I get home in the evening, and by then, the pollen on the flowers has been out in mid-90's all day. I think that maybe the pollen is cooked by then! I'll try it mid-day this weekend or maybe bring a flower bud inside and put it in water and let it open.

Hi kiwinut.

I don't recall exactly, but it was sometime in the afternoon, after incarnata had been open for 3 - 4 hours. My Incence flowers usually open mid-morning, and incarnata and caerulea open closer to noon. On my plants, there is generally a lot more pollen after the flowers have been open for several hours. I read somewhere that the anthers or pollen need a few hours after opening to mature, but I don't know whether that is true.

It looks like I might have finally gotten an Incense x caerulea to take -- the ovaries are definitely swelling. We'll see in a couple of more days.

Good luck!

-Jon

Strange that as incense was originally a caerulea x incarnata that it's so picky about pollination. Has anyone ever successfully crossed incense with another varietal?

Incense is from the cross incarnata x cinncinata, and has been successfully backcrossed to both parents. The cross back to cinncinata produced 'New Incense'. Incense has also been crossed to caerulea to produce 'Indigo Dream'.

Jon, I may need to collect pollen in the afternoon from some incarnata, and use it the next day as soon as the Incense flowers become receptive. I have read they are receptive as soon as the styles curve downward. When I leave for work in the morning, they have not opened yet, and by the time I get home, they have been open all day, so maybe I am missing the best window of opportunity.

Ah. Thanks for the correction Kiwinut. I'm still getting the cultivars confused, apparently! ;-)

I wish I could tell you for sure, Kiwinut, but I'm a real amateur at this. I'm posting a follow-up question about fertilizers that you might be able to contribute to...

-Jon

My own incesnes seems mostly to ignore caerulea pollen.

I pollenated Incense with Incarnata pollen and got 2 of three to form fruits. I went on vacation for a week and I returned expecting to see two beautiful fruits ready to pick (they were egg sized when I left) but I guess the squirrels got them while I was gone.

My incense has not bloomed since, though it is budding again. I only hope I have something else in bloom when it finally does bloom.

~Chills

After 4 failed attempts to pollinate Incense with incarnata pollen, I tried again Friday afternoon. Within 5 minutes it started to rain, which we needed badly, and continued to rain hard for 45 minutes. Since I have read that rain within a couple of hours of pollination will prevent success, I figured this would be another failed attempt. However, on Sunday I noticed a marble sized fruit! This time I pollinated during the middle of the afternoon, instead of late afternoon. I don't know if the fruit set occured in spite of the rain, or if the rain helped in some way, or it was due to the eariler time of day.

~kiwinut

The one fruit that set last week aborted after a few days. Bummer. I have now tried the pollen from many different incarnatas on my Incense without success. I am now trying bud pollination, where you open the tip of the bud 1-2 days prior to it opening, and apply the pollen to the stigmas. This method has been used to cross self-incompatible clones to themselves or to other incompatible vines (the proteins involved in self-incompatibility are not expressed until just before anthesis). So far, it looks promising, but I won't really be sure until the fruit hangs on for a while.