It's no bother, twins. I'd much rather talk about stuff like this than how to start a pineapple! :-p I've never had any seeds set up on P. alatisepala without hand-pollinating it (with another Portea), but I don't know if that necessarily means it couldn't have been self-pollinated by some insect. It also could have gotten some Aechmea pollen on it the same way. I've never tried selfing it or doing bigenerics with it, so I guess you'll just have to grow them out and see what comes out of it. Portea petropolitana v. extensa is a notorious cross-pollinator, though. It will cross easily with Aechmeas and all kinds of other things. Every time I've collected seed from it thinking it had selfed it turned out to have crossed with some Aechmea or other. P. alatisepala doesn't seem quite so promiscuous but it could share some of those tendencies. Neos are in the same subfamily too, but Porteas and Aechmeas are much more closely related, so that would be my prime suspect. Which Aechmeas were blooming at the same time? All it takes is one seed in the berry to make it turn blue (or purple or black). Sometimes they'll even do that and you won't find any seeds inside at all. I'm not sure why that happens, but usually if you only find one or two on an inflorescence that have changed color it means they've been pollinated. If there were only a few seeds it just means it wasn't very WELL pollinated. Pollen consists of a bunch of individual cells, or pollen grains, and each one is responsible for producing one seed, so if only a couple of pollen grains made contact with the stigma there will only be a couple of seeds. It's just like a sperm and egg thing but there are hundreds of eggs. That's why you can get different crosses out of the same batch of seedlings if more than one type of pollen got onto it, including its own. Obviously when you're hybridizing you want to try to avoid this so you can keep track of what the cross is, but this may explain some of the hybrids listed in the registry that show no characteristics of the presumed pollen parent, or that show traits that couldn't possibly have come from either of the named parents.

devo, if you can make out the tag on that community pot above you'll see I started them about a year ago, but they would probably be quite a bit bigger by now if I hadn't sown them so thickly in the pot. If they have plenty of space and get fertilized along the way you can get results a lot more quickly. Of course if you fertilize TOO MUCH they'll all look green for quite a while and you won't be able to tell what you've got, so a happy medium is best. The ones that I already pulled out and spotted off in the tray as you can see are really starting to take off now, but they're the same age as the others still in the pot. Ideally with Neos you should be able to get a mature specimen in about 2 years (at least in our year-round growing climate), and depending on the nature of the coloration/markings, they might show up as early as 6-8 months, but it is pretty variable. This type of banding tends to show up earlier than some other kinds, and since that's primarily what I'm looking for here, I can start culling these pretty early. Below is a different grex that I started at roughly the same time. You can see some color on a couple of the larger seedlings, but it won't develop fully until it's nearly mature, and I won't be able to tell what the form will be like for a while either. By the time they start to crowd the tray, though, I should be able to tell which ones I want to grow out further and then just chuck out the rest. Other hybridizers may prefer to grow them all out before evaluating them, but I have space issues that prevent me from doing that. I may be missing out on some winners, but hey, that's life!

They will sink back down once the water and sugars equalize. Sometimes this can take several days to weeks. Deanna

If you are hot-packing peaches and some float during packing, they will sink as weights equalize while sitting on the shelf. Just "accept" (in a Zen sort of way) and let time take care of the majority of the problem instead of trying to wrestle more peaches into the jar. They'll also taste better because they'll be more fully bathed in the syrup. If the seal holds then they're fine. One way to check (if you have the nerve) is to hold the jar upside down over a deep bowl. Carol