Plumerias are easy to start if the seed is fresh. Soak in water overnight then plant in a lightly moistened potting mix. Just push the seed head under the soil and allow the wing to remain above it. Keep it somewhere warm and keep it moist but not soggy. The seeds should sprout in a week or two. If they don't come up by then they are probably not viable. Plumerias from seed can take 3-6 years to reach flowering size, sometimes longer and they usually go dormant over the winter after the first year. You can get lots of info on the plumeria forum. I don't know about the hibiscus or bird of paradise. You might want to ask on the tropicals forum.

Hmmm...... the plot thickens. Interesting berries, Nev. They not only have reddish ovaries but the sepals are red too. N. johannis, cruenta and correia-araujoi have red ovaries with green sepals. Compacta (and macwilliamsii?) have both ovaries and sepals the same red color, but there's nothing in either the appearance of your plant or its parents to suggest either of those species, so I'm guessing the colored sepals and ovaries came from two different sources. Looking at the parents, 'Charm' is marmorata x chlorosticta (although many, if not most, plants in cultivation under those names are actually hybrids, so it's possible there could be more to it than that). It's got the dark red sepals of the chlorosticta side of the family. Actually, they're marmorated, same as the foliage, but if the foliage loses its marmoration in the genetic shuffle (as yours has), the sepals would lose it too. The parentage of 'Cracker Jack' is unknown. It's also a marmorated plant, probably with some chlorosticta in its background too, but wherever the red ovaries are coming from must be hiding in there too. Looking at your F2 seedling, I'm leaning towards johannis being the culprit, but there is so much else going on there it's hard to say. Not that any of this matters much, at least not to most people. I just enjoy genetic sleuthing, and the apperance of the fruits can tell you things that the foliage can't. Also, from a hybridizer's point of view, every bit of information you can glean about parentage will help you to better predict results. Otherwise you're just flying blind! What you see is not always what you get.... Below is a photo of the harvested ripe berries (with pollen tags, names facing away) of 3 different Neos. The bottom one is fairly typical of the genus in general, so no clues there (it happens to be Screaming Tiger, but there's nothing distinctive about its appearance). The middle one is johannis with telltale red ovaries and green sepals. The top one is Winnie the Pooh (Treasure Chest x olens), and although the plant itself is marmorated (like the seed parent), the reddish sepals are a clear indication of its olens heritage. (Gee, if I'd know the pic was going to come out this big I would have shrunk it down more! Probably should have cleaned up the tags a bit too, huh?) In this photo correia-araujoi is on the left, and Kiko on the right. Kiko is c-a x olens, and the berries are just as red as the seed parent, but you can see the olens influence in the paler sepals (olens has no chlorophyll in the sepals) with reddish spots. It's toned down, but its there, and very evident in the markings of plant itself. One last photo for anyone who finds this sort of thing interesting. This one's a bit of a puzzle. On the left is johannis 'French Form' (aka French's Cruenta), and on the right is one of its hybrids: 'Royal Grande'. First off, notice how much paler the FF berries are than the johannis (Fairchild?) in the first pic above, or even correia-araujoi in the second. The current ruling from the BIC is that all 3 of these are forms of johannis, and the appearance of c-a's fruits may lend credence to this, the red not being as watered down as you might expect if it were a natural hybrid. Of course if and when my johannis x marmorata seedlings mature, I will be comparing the appearance of the fruits to c-a. If they are paler pink I may have to concede the point. ;-) On the other hand, FF's fruits have a hybrid appearance to me. I suppose the fruit color in a species could be as variable as the foliage color, but this just gives me one more reason to suspect it too may be a natural hybrid. Based on the foliage apparance my other suspected parent is spectabilis, but I'm not seeing its dark sepals here so again, I'll have to wait until my spect x joh seedling mature and compare. Now, on to 'Royal Grande'. If anything, its berries are darker than that of its daddy on the left, and more of a purplish tinge. So where the heck did that come from? Presumably from the other parent, which in this case is 'Takemura Grande'. The parentage of TG is given as "carcharodon(?) X concentrica(?)". In those days "carcharodon" usually meant pascoaliana, so I'm assuming pasc and conc are involved, but neither of those really explains the dark ovaries, unless it's just a case of the predominantly red pigment in the whole plant being purpled up by concentrica? The mystery continues.... As usual, way more information than you asked for, Nev, so feel free to ignore any or all of it. ;-)

Now that's what I'm talking about! Rian, you're speaking directly to my heart. Glottis are so generous with their seeds and that's a very nice one... longum perhaps?

Hi farmerpickle, If your plants are blooming chances are they'll make their own seeds, but if you want to make sure simply look inside the flower and take the pollen and distribute it on the ends of the pistils of the same flower or on different flowers of the same plant or those of the other plants. Hellebores produce plenty of seed and are often self-fertile. Once pollenated, you will see the seed capsules swell in the interior of the flower. Later they will mature and the follicles will turn from green to greenish-brown before splitting and spilling the seed. This isn't perfect but is generaly what happens with most hybrids.