Inyan

If your feeling lazy, you can always purchase a ready made mixture from a place such as this. https://www.uhlig-kakteen.de/header.php

Your not feeding your cacti too many systemic chemicals are you? Just a thought. Another thought is suggestibility/placebo effect.

Right on Garbage. I see you know a good bit about Brugmansia. The flowering region should never be cut back so as to remove that first fork that forms as this will increase the time drastically till you get that next set of flowers. Still, you won't have to wait as long as you would for that same rooted specimen to flower as you would have to wait for a seedling to flower. Personally, I like cuttings from the non-flowering region as they tend to grow faster and taller. However, you can get a portion from the flowering region to grow just as fast and to revert to its nonflowering state by laying cuttings from the flowering region down in log type fashion. Simply cover these logs leaving a few nodes exposed and these cuttings will revert to their immature state growing much more vigorously and much taller than your normal cuttings taken from above the flowering region. However, if you want a bush rather than a tree form... those cuts above the Y or fork are best. Man, I think I've just rehashed everything you've said Garbage. Forgive me, I haven't had much sleep. Your posts are much appreciated Garbage and its nice to see another who is so knowledgeable when it comes to Brugmansia. Keep that mumbo jumbo coming Garbage. Its well appreciated I am sure. Nice to have you as a neighbor Garbage. I'll be seriously reducing my Brugmansia garden and getting rid of some as yet unreleased Brugmansia aurea in the not to distant future. If your still hold an interest then, I'll gladly let you have a few.

Looks like your well on your way to flowers. You should be able to see the flower buds starting by now. If your camera is a good one, you should be able to take pictures of them as well if you can keep from shaking. As Garbage is inferring, you may loose the first set of blooms as this is not uncommon.

http://www.huntington.org/BotanicalDiv/Sch...alogindex7.html You might want to consider getting some of these to pollinate your next batch with if you want to introduce some color into these hybrids. Just food for thought.

Pruning the offsets is fine, its the top that you don't want to prune. Give me a picture of the smallest leaf at the top and I'll tell you if its going to bloom anytime soon. The picture at the top looks like it might be close, but I can't make out enough detail in the leaf. Your plants look fairly young by the way so you shouldn't be too discouraged at this stage of the game. Trust me, you will have seeds if you have two different Brugmansia and take the time to cross pollinate them.

http://www.super-grow.biz/GibberellicAcid.jsp Did you dilute the Super Thrive? http://www.superthrive.com/page1.htm This is the stuff your talking about? Its been several years since I bothered to buy the stuff, but if memory serves me I also followed the directions. Its a bad habit I've been known to follow with fertilizers and such.

I've used it on all those plants you mention and a few more. To be honest, I never noticed anything of note. Now, GA3 on the other hand will definitely give your plants, seeds, etc. a boost that can not be overlooked. Still, you have to be careful with growth hormones as you can kill seeds, plants etc that attempt to grow too fast for their own good. Not sure if that helps you and perhaps someone else will come along who thinks the world of this stuff. I'm always interested in learning.

http://www.sacredsucculents.com/ssofferings.html Noticed this place has a few hybrid Trichocereus seeds And this place has some selections of hybrid Trichocereus cuttings. http://www.basementshaman.com/trichyb.html For others, a quick search for Trichopsis or Echinopsis hybrids will yield some beautifully flowered specimens of many different colors. Just thought you might be interested in some of these links as your into hybridizing these beautiful cacti. The more the merrier. You can never have too many flowers or too much diversity in your collection.

Glad to hear that you have an abundance of seedlings already started. It goes without saying that your seeds will make it to some who are hopefully concerned with keeping the crosses going that you have started and making some of their own crosses with them as well. I can't wait to see some pictures of your seedlings from this cross going both ways. I think it is a shame when a seedling or seed goes out and never has a chance of setting seed itself or at the very least cuttings are not saved for future propagations as valuable genetic stocks are lost.... Seed grown cacti just can't be beaten for the diversity they bring to the gene pool. Of course, having superior parents helps, but superior is a matter of opinion as one person values one trait and another a different trait or traits.

Incredible cactus has some incredible Lophophora if you search through the pages. Some of those Ariocarpus make you do some serious thinking about how they came to be. They seem too incredible to be true. Other than that, I like page 9 of that same site. http://www.thaimisc.com/freewebboard/php/v...5068&page=9

I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for you Teotz. I have access to fast and easy seeds as well as plants over here, but nothing as rare as what you have in your collection now. I'm hoping you have enough seed to risk grafting a few right away, but I've noticed that some suppliers seeds while inexpensive don't always hold the best records for germinating. Another reason I prefer to buy in bulk and from numerous places when I can. L. jourdaniana seeds are still fairly expensive in most places over here, but the cacti themselves are fairly cheap. At least in comparison to the seed and the time it takes for them to grow to flowering size etc. I've seen several different forms of L. jourdaniana which is one of my favorites for blooming characteristics. I'd love to see more people interested in hybridizing just this one species with its varied genetics, but introducing foreign species into the mix is also a plus if your up to it. 3.60 for 10 L. jourdaniana seeds from one source and 10.80 for 20 seeds from another source. You can see that L. jourdaniana seeds are not even offered by some places that prefer to sell the more variable seedlings themselves while the more common types they sell seed and cacti both. I'll submit another website for your perusal that shows a few variations in the local populations. I like diversity myself and think that it is best to have distinct populations of genetics in your collection for setting seed as well as for general esthetics. Yeah, I know there are those that want to keep each local variation distinct and separate. To those people, I say why can't you do both? http://www.cactusplaza.com/seeds-cactus-se...c-203_1338.html

http://www.lophophora.info/ https://ssl.kundenserver.de/bestellung.ars-...d1b4973b6a0ed2d The above two links have many pictures between the two showing various forms of L. jourdaniana. I like the one picture from the last site the best. You can also find range information on the first to see where different localities arise as well as differences in phenotype found at each location. Personally, L. jourdaniana is one of the most esthetically pleasing species to me, but some of the others have such a nice bloom potential that they can't be overlooked by the serious cacti collector or would be hybridizer. https://www.uhlig-kakteen.de/header.php

Lucky you Teotz. I hope the seeds germinate for you well. I've been most impressed with the L. jourdaniana though myself. Flower size and color can be quite variable with jourdaniana. I'd love to see some hybrids created with good jourdaniana genetics. I don't know how easy it is to find good quality jourdaniana specimens in the states though mind you. Still, you work with what you can get. Teotz, did you manage to get a picture of the mom that gave you those seeds?

Congrats tantra. I like the double yellows as well. Double oranges are still my favorite mind you if were talking doubles. Still, the fact that it looks like an aurea which is my favorite species is something to be recognized. Can you post a picture of your hybrid creation in flower as well as the seed pod? Many thanks from a fellow Brugmansia nut.

Brugmansia aurea, the pure species, is very rare. I have yellow gold, white, and pink forms of this pure species. If anyone is interested in these give me a holler. Available for trade only. Double oranges, etc. also exist in my collection. Let me know what you have and are willing to trade. I'm particular to variegates, crested, and monstrose type cacti, but I'll entertain other novelties.

Grafting is an addiction. Once you start you can't help but to continue doing so and learning from each set of attempts as you go along. In short, you can't help getting better if you love what your doing and you wouldn't be here posting if you didn't love it. I'm sorry, there is no hope for you. You'll have to deal with continually learning and getting better at what you do. Hopefully, you won't have to relearn too much along the way.

Grafting weak scions onto strong stock is a given if you want to increase the chances of the weaker one growing to maturity and possibly breeding with that weaker seedling. Now, why would you want to introduce a weaker set of genetics into your hybridizing program? If your into variegates, crested forms, etc. then you have a reason to do this. If your into hybrids, you have a reason to do this. Should your goal be to continue variegated type crosses or crested forms you will find that you have better luck with grafting to keep your diversity up and to attain new seedlings and so on with those same characteristics. Now, if your goal is to create faster growing, taller, wider, more heavily flowering strains or hybrids then you will eventually want to start selecting for those traits from your hybrids. As a general rule of thumb, you do what you can to keep those first few generations of impossible crosses going until you can breed those genetics back into both parent gene pools to acquire the added advantage you hope to have achieved by your initial crosses. The weaker the scion is the more important it is that the stock is actively growing as the tissues between the two plants will be growing together and most of the strength will be coming from the stock. Albeit, with seedlings this is already the case and does not need to be stated. The weaker the scion though the more important it is to get an early graft started and the more important it is that you keep the humidity up. I've found that some grafts will not work without creating a humidity tent and others will succumb to bacteria, fungus, etc. when optimal temperatures and humidity are kept up. Take variegated Trichocereus pachanoi for instance. It is much more prone to root rot in general and must be treated similar to an ariocarpus if left on its own roots. Grafted to a nice stock plant of the same species that is not variegated though and it soon takes off in growth and no more worries about root rot. I know other experts will have more detailed information for you, but I'll leave this in place and hope they go into more depth when they arrive.

mumbojumbo stuff myself... now that comment might offend some people. Lol, not me though. I respect where your coming from. To each their own truth and respecting another's viewpoint whether we choose to agree with it or not is something that is hard for many of us to do. I have to agree with your other posts about taste as well. While irrelevant at some aspect and definitely variable as far as what constitutes a bad or good taste.. etc. Still, it is pleasant to have pleasant things and what is pleasant to one is horrible to another. Much of this is subjective in this context and just as variable as your liking of pepper in your eggs and cilantro in my eggs. Or perhaps to another both go well and either one by itself is distasteful. Food to think about at any rate.

Markcond, very nice information and thanks for posting it. A thread on initiating flower development might be nice as well as many cacti require a cold period etc. to flower. Is anyone up to this task?

http://www.cactusconservation.org/CCI/bb3.html I like this one. The bottom line is that pejuta has many variable forms, types of pollen, etc. There exists a wide degree of differences at many different levels. I'm very thankful that many cacti fanatics are conserving the genetics of different forms/local variations, but even this must be taken with a grain of salt as the few seed collected from each area and propagated via collectors creates a bottleneck type genetic situation in which those local variations are inbreed over and over without a very large gene pool. This is why I think it is also important to cross northern and southern location types together as well as different northern types to different northern types and so on as this may help increase genetic diversity in ways that would not be as possible or likely in their natural setting due to distance. Some have expressed interest in bringing this medicine thus collected and or hybridized and re-introducing it into the wild. My idea on this is that while this is a great idea, care should be expressed to plant these specimens away from other wild specimens and known locations as these may be found and harvested more quickly if placed in such area's. These are just my concerns and don't really amount to a hill of beans as people will reintroduce or not wherever they feel like reintroducing specimens or introducing specimens for the first time in different locations. Man made hybrids that may or may not have been made by nature if given the chance also pose an ethical dilemma to some if introduced into the wild as these strains may prove to be more variable or more hardy than their non-hybridized counterparts. Again, another reason I advocate releasing them away from the typical places they are found. In this manner, if they should interbreed with their wild counterparts it will be a more gradual affair and natural selection will favor those that are most suited for a particular area. Food to grow on at any rate.

Yes mutant, its an expression which means: If its not truly important don't worry about it. You've done a good job and thats all that needs to be said about your works of art. We all learn by trial and error and get better with time. I still have grafts that fail and I consider myself damn good at grafting having grafted tree seedlings to mature tree stocks, variegated cacti to non-variegated cacti, etc. Do I think I don't have anything to learn? I'd be a numbskull if I thought I couldn't learn more from you guys. There is still lots of grafts I haven't tried and many that I will continue to try until I get them right. I've only been grafting a bit over 10 years now and each stock poses new things to learn from as well as each scion. I don't believe in pushing grafted scions as much as you can push them with each and every type of stock as I've discovered that some scions need more time to develop properly and this can result in sickly plants. Yeah, don't get me started as I lose track quickly of where I was going with things. The bottom line is that this expression is similar to the expression of: Don't cry over spilt milk. What's done is done. When your given sour grapes make wine.... or some such nonsense.

Label your hybrid seedlings appropriately for you own benefit and others. The mom is always listed first then the dad. Pachanoi (mom) x macgronu (.pollen donator) for example. I'm of the opinion that it is best to grow out all of your own seedlings personally if you can spare the space. Next in line would be trading seed with others who have created different hybrids as this will increase your own potential for different genetics. Genes may be coding for the same things, but located on different chromosomes of different hybrids resulting in a quantitative increase in expression with some of your resulting hybrids in your F1 or more likely F2 crosses. This is why flower color shades vary in many hybrids as well as other traits you might be interested in.

Brugmansia as a general rule love a well aerated soil. Too compact and they don't grow very fast. Still, if you have a cutting from mature wood you should expect to see flowers as soon as you see the first fork. Still, sometimes your plant will abort the first set of flowers on that first fork and you will have to wait one more cycle. If you pulled up a sucker from the ground you may have actually pulled up a seedling. If you grow your Brugmansia properly and you realize that the particular genetics you are working with grow extremely fast under the right conditions you should have blooms in less than 10 months whether this is a seedling, cutting from immature wood, or wood from a flowering region as you don't experience a freeze which would necessitate you cutting your plants back, having them die back, etc. A 10 month old seedling from this genetic stock should be 5-12 feet tall at the very least if grown properly. Can we get a picture of your plants? A close up picture of the top uppermost leaves would tell us the most. The leaves will become lopsided just before the flowers start to form.

Grafting can influence disease resistance, phenotype, etc. I'm more interested in the rare chimera formed with some of these grafts myself though. Grafting can also influence what pollens a particular flower is susceptible to as well. I'm betting that chimera forms between more closely related species would of course have the largest potential for allowing cross pollination of species though. I'd love to see a L. jourdaniana chimera with any of the other Lophophora species myself. I've often wondered why more people aren't interested in intentionally trying to create chimera. Yes, most if not all chimera are accidents, but who's to say that they can't be intentionally created via normal grafting procedures? If 1 out of 1000 grafts had the potential of becoming a chimera given a certain technique then that is a good success rate as far as I'm concerned. Especially so if that chimera was done utilizing stock that one actually would like to see a chimera form from. One idea I've had is to try grafting a scion to a stock and then take that completed graft and cut it lengthwise to graft to another graft done in the opposite direction. This would form pizza like slices of grafted tissue as one progressed with each layer having tissue from a different scion/stock in a checkerboard like fashion. In this manner, you could keep grafting and re-grafting for as many years as it took. Yeah, I realize that it might not be the most aesthetically pleasing creation, but for me, the fun is in the trying. A single chimera would be worth it if it was between two species or genera that I actually wanted rather than something that I happened to come upon from chance. Auxin, Your bridgesii (seed bearer) x pachanoi (pollen donor) =F1 bp and your pachanoi(seed bearer) x bridgesii (pollen donator)= F1 pb. Those seedlings crossed to each other via F1 bp (seed bearer) x F1 pb (pollen donator) = F2 bpxpb should indeed yield some interesting results. Of course you could reverse the cross and most serious hybridizers would also try F2 pbxbp as well as pbxpb and bpxbp. I'm more for you trying to find someone you can hybridize with of course which makes things easier. For instance, if you know someone who can collect and gather some tersheckii pollen or some other such pollen that you might desire you can increase your variables a bit more. It is often standard practice to offer up a small portion of the resulting hybrid seed to the person who is sharing the pollen with you. However, sometimes you can find someone who is willing to do a straight swap of pollen. Still, lets say you have pollen from your F2pbxbp and you offer that up in trade to someone who has tersheckii pollen. Me personally, I'd be interested in the seed from the cross done both ways and I'd try to set up an agreement that any seed produced from said pollen would be shared both ways. This enables you to move along much faster than you might otherwise, but again... a fair amount of trust is involved in this as you are trusting the person to give you the proper pollen as well as a properly labeled batch of hybrid seed back. This is further compounded by the knowledge that the person trading with you realizes that the F1 seed will be difficult to tell in many cases from pure seed and hence if they are unethical and simply want your more valuable hybrid pollen for their own use... you can see where you could end up wasting a few years. It is imperative that you trust the person you are trading pollen with for this reason. You are also trusting that they are adept at cross pollination and preventing contamination by another foreign pollen as this might spoil your own designs and work. This is why many hybridizers would rather take longer to gather their own pollen and grow their own specimens as they know that if any mistakes were made, at least it was their own mistake and not intentional or the unintentional and well meaning blunder of someone else who may have thought they knew what they were doing. Nice Opuntia graft by the way Auxin.