Cannas: For the Canna Tyros - How to Grow Canna From Seeds, 1 by bwilliams

bwilliams wrote:
Your F2 and F3 are where you will see some of the nicer hybrids. However the cannas for the most part we are working with are all mutts or older hybrids and the heritage of these can bring up an array of different unseen traits. In most cases when breeding the first hybrid produces a combination of the two parents and the F2s will produce a spectrum of different prodigies. The more you continue to breed the more sterile the plants start to become and the more the genetics are jumbled up. It is usually in the F3s that you start seeing tetriploids and higher chromosome counts. A odd number of chromosomes will produce a sterile plant. With many of these the pollen is still good but the pollen is very scares and at times non existent. If of course you leave the technical ideas aside and breed beautiful and well performing plants with each other you will usually have very good stock and can easily come up with very interesting plants. I also have been breeding back to species and I think their are a lot of genes that may be missing in our hybrids today that could be brought into newer hybrids. Breeding new hybrids back to species can produce some interesting hybrids with new characteristics. It can take sometime breeding back and forth but species are quick to produce seed and easy to work with. With Cannas it is at times hard to pick out a certain trait to go for. You have to really keep a good eye on a plant and look for nick picky things to breed for. I for one have been breeding for different color combinations as well as flower power and flower shedding. Each year I produce something better than the following year.

Another note is oddities in your breeding such as wavy leaves large flower clusters that don't perform or other odd habits. I have talked to other breeders that see this odd behavior as bad traits and the plants are quickly thrown into the trash heap. Each hybrid has more genetic back ground than most people realize and often extremely deformed and overly genetic creations can be the key to great new plants. One case is a friend who told me of a fairly unattractive plant in his collection that he would breed everything with. This plant seldom produced seeds but when it did their was a 50/50 chance that the seedling would be extremely beautiful and worth naming. Now this does not mean that their aren't some that are just not going to perform. The idea here is to know what to look for. In most cases these plants are thick leaf large petal plants that are in the F3 or higher breed lines. I would consider them the gold gooses of breeding and most breeders usually have a plant like this they don't let out. Of course they are not all ugly but some can be pretty unusual. Just a odd ramble but something to look for.

This message was edited Jul 7, 2008 12:31 AM