There really are diurnal and nocturnal daylilies.
1 Like
I would say the main reason to try it is they seem more similar in their characteristics, so might be more able to cross than the others, though I’m not aware of any genetic profiles confirming whether they are more closely related than other Diospyros species. Although their native ranges are near each other in Mexico, it appears they are non-overlapping, so natural crosses would be rare even if they are able to be crossed.
Hybrids could produce larger, better-tasting fruit than texana, but with better frost and drought tolerance than nigra. Personally, I’ve never tasted texana, but nigra is one of my favorite tropical fruits, so anything that makes it more available to zone pushers would be great.
Crossing nigra with virginiana would be very interesting, but they seem more distantly related based on physical features, so crossing might be a long shot.
Would really be nice to find any genetic testing that’s been done on Diospyros species to see if any others are promising candidates for crossing with the ones with more desirable fruit. Sometimes a hybrid will produce something completely different in flavor and appearance from either parent (e.g, babaco papayas), so it might be worth just trying some crosses to see what they produce even with species that have less desirable characteristics?
As far as I know, most Diospyros species are dioecious, making it relatively easy to confirm any seeds produced are crosses if you are careful with your experiment, so that’s another reason to consider other crosses in the genus in general.
Edit: here are some maps showing native range of various Diospyros species:
2 Likes
There’s also a diospyros californica in Baja California which is more similar to the nigra in size, but texana in hardiness.
2 Likes
Do you have a source for those traits of californica? The best I could find was A revision of neotropical Diospyros, which describes the californica fruit size as only “up to 3 cm in diameter” – I’ve had nigra fruit that were the size of a large grapefruit, so seems like no contest on that front, but definitely another species to consider. That journal article says that pre-columbian peoples may have crossed californica with sonorae “to improve fruit quality,” so that’s another cross worth thinking about.
1 Like
The ones in the lower right are American persimmons that I’d assume are 3 cm. That’d put the californica at least at 9 by my estimation.
3 Likes
Interesting range map, but Diospyros virginiana extends through East Texas into North/Central Texas…so it’s odd they largely left it out of the entire state? Because, you definitely have it overlapping with Diospyros texana there.
Wow, would love to hear/see more about this one! But, I can’t find much on the interwebs about it?
Pretty rare. I only know of one individual that sourced seeds and I was intending to try to get some for my breeding project but got confirmation that grafted digna died on virginiana rootstock when exposed to cold, and I have no greenhouse. I assumed the same would be true for the californica, and the source has also said the germination rates are abysmal. Probably needs to be passed through the digestive system of an extinct groundsloth.
2 Likes
could always try swallowing them whole yourself!
All the range maps I can find show it cutting off somewhere in eastern Texas, to varying degrees including some of central Texas:
Here’s the source for the earlier map:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-97121-6_11
2 Likes
Yes, that definitely seems more accurate! I know they extend to at least as far west as I-35…not sure about beyond that? Not sure what the constraint is here…maybe ground that gets too rocky and alkaline?
I used to have some hybrids between Lima Beans and Phaseolus polystachios. They bloomed pretty well, and rather early after sprouting, but they never set a single pod. Perhaps I should’ve been more patient with them.
The Hybrid Jaboticabas (Red and Roxa, seemingly two separate hybrids between M. cauliflora and M. aureana) are said to be as tasty as the parents and precocious, blooming in 3 years instead of the usual 8. There’s a lot of diversity to explore among the Jaboticabas, and they do well in containers (although they like a water dish underneath). I killed my M. coronata by transplanting it, but I have other species to cross, and my red hybrid is bearing its first fruit (the Yellow one is entering the blooming stage).
I’ve been meaning to re-attempt Burbank’s Strawberry x Raspberry, but my raspberry died (after several years). My Alpine Strawberry is still alive, and I’m getting some raspberries soon. Untitled Document
Schoener’s Rose x Apple hybrid is intriguing, and seems counterintuitive to me (especially concerning the disparate haploid numbers), but I’d like to attempt it as well. Untitled Document
Given similar haploid counts and a shared branch of the family tree, there’s plenty of Rosa, Rubus and Fragaria species to test for hybrids, especially among the diploids.
And regarding animals… Chicken x Pheasant seems to have partial fertility (I think the females are fertile?). As a pet project, I’d love to introgress Melanistic Mutant ringnecks into Black Sumatra chickens, for a hybrid breed with minimal pheasant genetics, but visible pheasant influence in the phenotype. I think the results could be very interesting.
2 Likes
Jaboticabas are also in the family with Pomegranate, chilean guava, and crape myrtle. I’d LOVE to have those guys be more cold hardy.
I would really love to see a study on why Sorbus is so promiscuous in the rose family freely hybridizing multiple others. That trait would be lovely to find elsewhere.
Pomegranate is in Myrtales, family Lythraceae (most myrtles are Myrtaceae). I’m curious to see if such a hybrid could be done. I’m not aware of interfamilial hybrids in plants, just animals (always those darned Galliformes! 
).
For more cold-hardy myrtles, there’s Feijoa and Luma. It might be worthwhile to cross either of those with each other and with Chilean Guava.
- Edit: for more distantly related hybrids, Michurin sterilized the pollen of the female parent (reproductively sterile, but chemically active) and mixed it with fertile pollen from the male parent, for one to open the way for the other. Mentor pollination.
1 Like
The impetus of this thread was the successful grafting of a pomegranate onto a crape myrtle. The thought was if there’s enough compatability across families, familial structure may be close enough to push some grafting and breeding. My luma on crape myrtle graft did not take so far, but we’ll see if it magically regenerates lol.
Despite the common name, Crape Myrtle is also a Lythracean.
But there’s another point of inquiry… Somatic Hybrids! I’m fascinated by the concept, and wonder if it could cross family boundaries.
I don’t know if most people would consider Somatic Hybrids as GMO’s, given that they require messing with the cells in a lab, but they’re very different from transgenics in that the resulting cells (if closely related enough) would consist of the full and separate genomes of both parent stocks, growing as a single non-chimeric organism. There is a natural precedent for this in Allopolyploid species (the Triangle of U - Wikipedia being a prime example), which are the result of a natural fusion event between unreduced gametes of separate species. For Somatic Hybrids, they strip the cell wall with an enzyme (¿cellulase?), fuse ‘em with an electric shock and culture the results. I’ve read of it being done with Tomato+Potato ( https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF02906548.pdf ), among others, but I think more promising results could be achieved with vegetatively propagated plants.
If I had the resources, I’d love to cross the following:
Onion x Garlic (though it’s already been done by pollen)
Ulluco x Madeira Vine
Colocasia x Xanthosoma
Alocasia x Cyrtosperma
Arracacha x Celeriac
and also Strawberry x Raspberry
If the species being fused are too distant, the result is usually a nearly pure specimen of one parent, with some random genes from the other.
Edit: Also Radish x Turnip. I’d like to try them by pollen soon.
6 Likes
Believe it or not, I have tried in the opposite direction, osage pollen into a fig. I wasn’t trying to make a hybrid, instead trying to induce apomictic seeds based on an old Russian research paper, didn’t work.
Osage blooms a few weeks ahead of when caprifigs are ripening pollen. So you would have to source pollen from a much warmer location, or store it somehow for a year. That would be the way to go though, figs have a gene that makes them ripen without pollination which can only be passed by the pollen parent. So if a cross did succeed with osage as the pollen parent the results would require pollination, and the fig wasp is so highly specialized it most likely won’t do the job on whatever weird fruit results. So you’d need pollen from what is called a persistent capifig, and they are rarer than hens teeth.
2 Likes
On ourfigs I’ve seen people sticking a sharpened stick coated in pollen into a fig. Regarding stored pollen, pollen can be stored for ages if it’s done properly. Mix it with a bit of powdered sugar then apply.
That might have been me… Pollen on a stick didn’t work very well, it gets rubbed off when pushing the stick through the ostiole.
I switched over to putting a stick into the ostiole to clear the way, pushing in a whole stamen and then flicking the fig so it bounces around inside.
A syringe also works, I just melted the end of the plastic and drew it out like a pipette, then packed a little pollen in the end and puffed it inside. Mixing it with anything seems risky, because the flowers are internal mold and bacteria spores can proliferate. About 20% or so ended up dropping before ripe, or souring even though I was very careful to work as clean as possible.
Was your osage into fig attempt before the updated procedure or after?
From a prominent kiwi researcher I got the following on pollen storage: “A better alternative would be to collect, dry and freeze anthers from the desired males and then use the pollen on the anthers when it is needed. This will give you much greater flexibility for your crosses. When stored at 0 degrees F, Actinidia pollen will remain viable for 7 to 10 years. I can provide you with information about this if you are interested. I found it helpful to add a small amount of powdered sugar (sucrose + corn starch) to the stored pollen when making crosses as this will promote pollen tube germination.”
I think you’d want the osage as the seed parent in this crossing, but why not try both ways if possible?
Lots of fun ideas here.
I’ve wondered if aronia could be crossed with big sweet pomes like pears, Asian pears, or apples, to get things that are sweet and also purple. It might also be worth trying with amelanchier, which are delicious, although small and perishable. These crosses between bushes and trees might also produce convenient-sized small trees.
1 Like
Yes, graft translocation is a thing, however, it is a bit more specific than you seem to think. First, look up lamarckism and find out a bit about the topic. Huge caution that a bunch of bafflegab is out there so put some time in to dig out the kernels of truth. After that, look up epigenetics and find out what it does.
We have white fruited tomatoes. We have red fruited tomatoes. The carotenoid biopath is moderately complex. You can find plenty of research papers describing production of various chemicals such as phytoene, lycopene, and beta carotene which give a tomato characteristic color. Now here is your graft translocation example. If you graft a white fruited tomato on top of a red fruited root stock, the white fruited tomato will produce pinkish/red fruit. How does this happen? It has not been explained other than to suggest graft transference of chemicals that make red fruit. Now here is where it gets kinky. Save seed from that pinkish/red fruit produced by a white fruited tomato grown on a red fruited rootstock. Plant the seed and voila, they will produce red fruited tomatoes. It takes 2 generations of growing seed before the white fruited trait shows back up.
5 Likes