yato, I'm going to ask this question but I expect no answer from you. The answer will only be important to you. How old are you? The reason for the question is: I believe there are no plants, or at best only a very few plants that you can carry out a meaningful hybridizing program with in a short period of time. Having been associated with a nursery that had a sizeable orchid breeding program, many years ago, the average time for most orchids to reach blooming size from seed sowing, was about 7 years. Adenium's are a bit faster growing than that, but from seed sowing to first blooms will still be measured in years.

Another critical point is record keeping. Excruciatiatingly detailed and accurate records must be kept of everything you do in the breeding process, especially if you intend to sell your plants. It is more than embarrassing to grow a crop of seedlings that you think, and advertise will produce white blooms, for instance, and then a couple of years after the sale your customers begin to come to you complaining their plants are all producing beautiful red blooms. Now, if you just want to cross pollinate a few of your own plants just to see what you will get, forget everything I have said, do it, and have fun.

Some very basics of genetics. If you have two plants that are true species, crossing the two plants, or selfing(using pollen from one plant to produce a seed pod on that plant) either one of them should produce seedlings that look like the parent(s). However, just for the fun of it, lets say that one of your "species" isn't. We'll say it is the product of a long line of breeding, but several generations back a plant was used to make a cross that the breeder thought was the species but was not, we'll say it was dominant for the characteristics of your intended species, but still carried the genes of the mystery plant as recessive genes. In this case, your seedlings could very well bloom with some completely unexpected characteristics.

Basically, you cross a white and a red (both species) you should get some whites, some reds, with the majority something in between. Caution: If either parent you used is a long line hybrid with plants with different characteristics, "grandparents", "great-grandparents" and on and on back will all have an influence on your outcome.

You will see results (flowers) at each generation. Pollinate the flower, when the pod matures and opens, harvest the seeds, plant them, grow them to maturity, and they will bloom. That's a generation. It's that simple. Good luck, and most of all, have fun.

Bill

hi yato comman adeniums are white with pink or white or red most seedlings will be that color there are single and doubles and tripel blooms with adeniums you never know what you will get most will be white and pink but sometimes there are something different with care you can get blooms as soon as a year and sometimes as early as 6 to 8 mo. i have crossed lots of adeniums and have several colors it takes about 9 mo for a seed pod to open and you can get from 10 seeds to 120 seeds from one pod its a lot of fun playing with them there are places you can buy seeds if you don’t have time to pollinate a bloom try it you will have fun

roger

Sorry for the late response I was at work.

Bill, I am 23 years old, I don't plan on selling my plants yet I was just curious what will happen if I cross pollinated but couldn't find answers. I really appreciate all the information you've given me I will put it to good use.

I have already cross pollinated the plants and the seedpods have begun forming, maybe in a few years I will know what the result was 😂 it really must take a lot of patience in this line of work.

Katie, I like the idea of buying seeds and pollinating them later! I will research more in depth on this topic.

Thank you so much!!

Yato, Point of clarification. If you purchase seeds: The seeds you purchase are the results of someone pollinating flowers, which produced the seeds you purchased. You can keep these seeds for a while before you plant them. When you plant the seeds, they will produce plants, which will bloom when they mature. you can self pollinate those flowers, or use pollen from other plants flowers to produce more seeds. Have fun. Just remember, messing around with plants can become highly addictive.

Bill

As has been pointed out, what you wind up with depends on the genetics of the parents and luck. The more unusual flowered hybrids out there are generally the result of random mutations which the grower capitalized on. Often they will self such a plant to increase the odds of getting more similar to it. To get at least an idea of what is most likely to result from your crosses, you might do a search to see if anyone has listed what traits tend to be dominant. (For example, with Cattleya orchids, lavender tends to be dominant over any other colors. So a plant with deep red flowers crossed with one with lavender flowers is most likely just going to have lavender flowers.) However, with most plants, flower traits are rarely simple dominant and recessive interactions. Instead, there is often a spectrum of "partial dominance" or multiple genes which are involved.

If you decide to get more seriously into hybridizing, as Bill pointed out, keep very detailed notes and LABEL every offspring/pot/tray. If you have the plants outside, then another step would be to emasculate (remove the stamen before they mature) the flower you are going to pollinate to reduce the chance of self-pollinating. After hand pollinating, "bag" the pollinated flower with cheese clothe or other light breathable material to prevent an insect or other animal from also pollinating the flower.