Propagation, Culture, And Winter Care
Best time to propagate
Propagation by Runner
>Propagating the Tropicals
Viviparous reproduction
Chain Propagation From Tubers
Wintering the Tropicals
BY SEED-HYBRIDIZATION
Most water gardeners treat tropical water-lilies as annuals, allowing them to die off in the winter, ordering new stock in the spring. And yet they can be propagated in many more ways than the hardies can, although, it is true, not as easily.
All you have to do to carry the hardies through the winter is to lower them to the pool bottom, where they will be safely below the frost line. To carry the tropicals over, a certain amount of winter work indoors is necessary. Because they are inexpensive, most water gardeners prefer to order new stock every year and avoid the winter care.
As with the hardies, propagation of tropical water-lilies by hybridization is a fascinating pursuit for those who want to take the trouble. The procedure is the same, but infinitely more rewarding if you are working with the tropical species. These seed quite freely and produce successfully from seed. Many tropical hybrids do not seed freely.
The better seed-bearing day-blooming tropicals for hybridization include Nymphaea capensis, coerulea, gracilis, flavovirens, and elegans; N. capensis zanzibariensis, rosea, azurea, and Blue Beauty.
The better night bloomers for hybridizing include Nymphaea lotus and dentata, N. dentata superba and magnifica, Bissettii, Omarana, George Huster, Jubilee, N. rubra, N. Deaniana, Missouri, Mrs. George Hitchcock, and B. C. Berry.
Selecting the Seed Parent. Like the hardies, the tropicals are most fertile late in the blooming season. Select the seed parent, and two or three days before it opens naturally, carefully force it open. Snip off the stamens and remove them with tweezers. Slip a rubber band over the tip of the bud to keep it from opening again, or cover with cheesecloth to keep out insects and foreign pollen. Selecting the Pollen Parent. Two days later select the pollen par
ent, a bloom in its second day (or night) of flowering. Snip off the pollen-laden anthers (as you did when you hybridized the hardy waterlily) and place them upon the sticky stigma of the chosen seed parent. Take extra care in this procedure. While you transfer them, cover the anthers by putting them into an envelop or bottle. The tropicals are exceedingly fertile and readily pick up unwanted pollen from the air.
Collect the resulting seeds, plant them, rear the seedlings, and finally, as with the hardies, plant them outdoors, but somewhat later in the season.
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Dr. George H. Pring, of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, the world's leading authority on tropical water-lilies, gathers pollen for crossbreeding. His experiments have produced the first worthwhile tropical yellows and whites. These were once comparatively rare.
Hybridizing and propagating the tropicals by seed can be very interesting, but there are surer, less troublesome ways, the simplest being root division. Before freezing weather, dig up tubers of the tropicals. They look like sweet potatoes. Store the roots in cool, moist soil for the winter, and some of them probably will be ready for planting again next season; most of them, however, will undoubtedly rot.
It is wise to save only what healthy planting stock you need. Examine the larger tubers, the ones which rot most readily, and you will notice that many have developed tubers resembling small walnuts. These protrude here and there from the parent tubers. Cut them off and store them for the winter in cool, clean, damp sand. They will keep well.
Two months before you plan to plant the new tubers outdoors, take them from the sand and plant them in sandy soil in shallow water. If kept at 70 to 80 degrees they will produce leaves in two weeks. At this point transfer the plants to pots, keep the pots submerged at an ever-increasing depth as the plants grow, and maintain them this way until it is warm enough to move them to the outside pool.