Ryan,timing can be crucial to sucessful pollination.In most Hippeastrum the pollen is shedding long before the stigma is ready to be pollinated.Hippeastrum vary in the shape and spread of the lobes or arms of the stigma. Watch what the maximum spread of the lobes is on the variety you are interested in pollinating.Pollinate it then.Some do not spread,especially in doubles. You may need to collect the pollen as soon as it starts to shed.If the stigma would be ready within one day and your room temperatures fall below 78fah,then just lay it on a sheet of paper or such and pollenate that day. If the stigma does not appear ready at the end of one day,then refridgerate the pollen,until the stigma is ready.Quite often when just doing a one flower self,another flower on the same scape may be ready for the pollen because it is a little older. I some times pollinate three times over a spread of two days,or so,when unsure. Del

Two clones means that they need to have originated from two separate seeds, and therefore they are genetically distinct. A lot of varieties are passed around for years by rooting cuttings. It might not even be obvious that two plants coming from different companies/nurseries are in fact the same clone--you have to be careful. For some species I understand there are actually a very small number of clones in general ciruculation. I think I heard this is the case for coccinea and vitifolia, for example. Each passion flower has both male and female organs, so that's not a concern, although there may be instances of clones that do not produce viable pollen or fruit. This is common for hybrids--I'm not sure about species. As far as how this works, I don't know the details, but i assume it is somewhat analogous to an immunological response in animals, whereby self vs. non-self is recognized. If the pollen is from the same clone, the plant must have mechanisms that recognize this and prevent pollination. I don't know offhand what those are. So if you need two to make fruit, once you have the appropriate plants, you need to have the correct pollinator, which can be a bee, bird, bat, etc. To be honest, I don't have a clue how this works for each individual species--perhaps someone here knows for the ones you mention. I do seem to recall that for the bee pollinated ones, often the bigger the bee the better (e.g. Carpenter bees)--they are more likely to brush up against the reproductive organs. Sometimes the situation can be very specific. For example, the rare and possibly extinct P. parritae is thought to have gone through a big drop in population when its only pollinator (a hummingbird) moved to higher altitude due to the effect of global warming. In California we have non-native Argentine ants. They are also extremely common. I've been told that some of the Tacsonias in Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco are pollinated by ants as you suggest (their normal pollinators are generally humingbirds, I think larger than our species). If you need to cross pollinate to get fruit, there should be no difference (perhaps tiny?) no matter the source of the pollen. Of course if you want to grow new plants from seed, this does become important. I believe P. coccinea (miniata) x vitifolia and P. quadrangularis x alata hybrids are very common.

Earl B is the originator of that website, and I know Earl. He's been aggressively collecting seed for many varieties for quite a few years now and his intent was to sell seeds for what he grows. As you can see from his site he's not quite in business yet but has listed his inventory. I'm sure he'll start selling seed for less than 900 varieties at first, and whether he gets up to selling seed for 900 all at the same time, well, I doubt that just b'c of the mechanics. There are many folks I know who have seed collections of many more than 900 varieties, actually there are several SSE members who list close to that in the SSE YEarbooks, for SSE members only. I'm one of those tomato obseesed folks who has grown over 2500 different varieties and I haven't thrown out one saved seed since 1990. But then I'm not in the seed business, just obsessed with tomatoes. LOL I list a few varieties in the SSE YEarbooks and many years ago made huge seed offers here at GW, but switched from doing them here to another site where I just got through with the 2011 offer, now closed, and packed up about 400 seed packs and don't want to see another #1 coin envelope for a very long time. LOL Carolyn Carolyn

We do have a lot of farmers markets although an excellent one in Tilton NH during winter lost use of a retail storefront and is not active this winter. I love visiting farmers markets any time of the year. The two small ones near me don't offer very much but have great greens. I tend not to go out to a Saturday morning market so keep missing them. Our neighbor farmer only had two children but both live on abutting properties. The son is as hardworking as his dad. NH has a Young Farmers program so it's not unusual to see a young couple starting out in vegetable farming. One of the best success stories is Apple Hill Farm in Concord NH. They bought their land just when the wholesale apple market was caving. Their story is on their website. I attended a NH Apples program Diane Souther gave and was simply amazed at how much they have accomplished and how far they sell (send apple juice to the mid-west). They must be very good business people plus they are involved with several agricultural study programs like testing out a nasty insect trap.