She recognized several prominent hybridizers of aloes, including Kelly Griffin ofAltman Plants, and Brian Kemble of The Ruth Bancroft Garden & Nursery. Hybridizing can build upon the products of other hybridizers, or work primarily with natural species. Hybridizers typically welcome efforts to add to their successes by crossing their hybrids with other plants. This approach is not so much plagiarism as respect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Generally, hybridizing can seek improvements in plants for landscape appeal, flowering, vigor, pest or disease resistance, or other characteristics. Zimmerman emphasizes what she terms \u201cfantasy aloes,\u201d which have unusual colors, patterns, or spinose teeth on the leaf margins. She has introduced several hybrid aloes with names that suggest fantasies, e.g., \u2018Dragon\u2019,\u2018Gargoyle\u2019, \u2018Wily Coyote\u2019, and \u2018Chameleon\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The process begins with transferring pollen from one plant to another. Zimmerman uses various tools for this task, and currently favors her fingers, tweezers, and dentistry tools. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The nextstep is to collect the resultant seeds, which are small and easily lost.Zimmerman recommends mesh drawstring gift bags, which are inexpensive and effective in catching seeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She plants the seeds with labels indicating the \u201cpollen parent\u201d and \u201cseed parent,\u201d plus date and other information of interest. Her planting mix is 80% pumice and 20%forest humus, with the seeds covered with grit. The seeds need to be kept in warm, moist conditions, which can be provided with a closed plastic bag in indirect light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Aloes, which are monocots, germinate and produce one leaf from the seed in about two weeks. As the plants develop, the hybridizing process consists of editing: the cross between two plants produces numerous seedlings, some of which hopefully will exhibit the desirable traits the hybridizer intended, and others (perhaps all!)will be\u2014as Zimmerman describes them\u2014 less interesting, boring, or even ugly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nseedlings will take various amounts of time to show their mature form.\nZimmerman compares them to human teenagers, who reveal their \u201ctrue selves\u201d at\nvarious ages. Some very young seedlings will be unique in interesting ways,\nwhile others might be late bloomers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Editing the seedlings can be the hybridizer\u2019s most important function. It involves choosing those that are worthy of continued development and those that are discarded to make room on the nursery bench. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The hybridizer thinks of appropriate names for the successes and eventually introduces them to commercial distribution. That process uses tissue culture(cloning) to propagate enough cultivars to meet market demand. Seed propagation doesn’t work because growing hybrids from seed yields unpredictable results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout her talk, \u201cAloes on My Mind,\u201d Zimmerman demonstrated her continuing enthusiasm for hybridizing aloes, and revealed that, \u201cThe real fun is imaging what’s next!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The succulent gardeners in her audience recognized that hybridizing plants is easy and an enjoyable aspect of gardening that they might just try themselves. One of them could produce next season\u2019s most exciting hybrid aloe. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hybridizing plants is an easy process: bees do it! They\u2019re usually pollinating plants of the same species, but occasionally, they move a plant\u2019s pollen to a different, compatible species and, without intention, begin the process of natural hybridization. Human hybridizers, … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ongardening.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Aloe-DZ-by-Karen-Zimmerman.jpg?resize=584%2C514\")