Good quality seeds are an important starting point for strong, healthy plumeria seedlings. Obtain seeds from a trusted source or collect mature seed from a healthy pod parent. Before planting, keep containers, tools, and growing mix clean, and discard seeds that are moldy, broken, badly shriveled, or visibly damaged. Do not use hot-water or chemical treatments unless a seedborne problem has been identified and a validated plumeria-specific protocol is available.
Small, shriveled and broken seeds contain less nutrition for the developing seedling. By removing these inferior seeds, the grower is able to grow stronger and healthier seedlings.
Plumeria rubra seedlings do not grow true to the parents; each seedling is genetically unique, and flower quality is unpredictable. Traits can sometimes tend to reflect the pod parent, so parent history is useful context rather than a promise. During the growing season, observe the differences and mark preferred plants with a ribbon or stick. When selected plants later produce seed pods, keep careful records so their offspring can be evaluated as another generation of seedlings.
The selection of these plumeria seeds may be based on characteristics such as the size of the plant, color of flower, blooming traits, etc. But selection can also be done to keep seeds of plumeria that suffered less attacks by insects or diseases.
In this way, the grower will select the best seeds to be kept apart for the next season. Still, just before starting the seeds, it is recommended to select once more to remove seeds that are too small, spotted, deformed, discolored, etc.
Selection of Parent or Parents
When thinking about choosing a pod parent you should take into consideration which characteristics you would like your new seedling to have:
- Flower: Color, Size, Keeping Quality
- Fragrance, etc.
- Tree: Growing Habit.
- Leaves: Color, Size, etc.
- Blooming: Quality, Size of Inflorescence, Number of flowers blooming at the same time, How long does it bloom, etc.
The goal is to get a spectacular plumeria seedling that has some of the characteristics you want in your new Plumeria.
To help you better understand why. If a seed pod has 40 seeds and the seeds can inherit genes from 7 generations back, you can understand why it is common for each of seeds from the same pod to have completely different genes and look nothing alike.
If Possible:
- Select a pod parent that is known to produce the characteristic you desire or at least a pod parent that has the characteristics you desire.
- Obtain seeds from trusted growers.
- Find out the history of the pod. i.e. What’s growing close to the pod, did they bloom at the same time. Was it cross pollinated (it will be very rare to find seeds for sale that has been cross pollinated), manually pollinated by human or pollinated by nature (could be self pollinated or by insects)?
- Obtain all the seeds from a pod when possible.
- Select seeds from a healthy tree.
- Select seeds that are plump and look healthy.
Use visible quality, not color predictions
- Choose plump, intact seed over seed that is paper-thin, damaged, moldy, or badly shriveled.
- Seed-coat color and a young seedling’s stem or leaf color do not reliably predict its eventual flower color or rootstock quality.
- Use known parent history to set breeding goals, then evaluate each seedling on its own health, growth, and eventual bloom.
I feel the most important factor in pollination and seed selection is the selective of parents or at least the selection of the pod parent! Many years ago I planted about 15 seeds from Penang Peach, one seedling that bloomed in 2009 exceeded my expectations, we named it Camelot. It turned out to be a great seed producer and I’ve been planting seeds for Camelot every year. In 2013, I started experimenting with pollination and cross-pollinate. As a result, I got one seed pods that producing a total 38 seeds from Camelot. I planted them in 2014 and in 2016 some of the seedlings started to bloom and in 2017 more bloomed, so far I have 18 plus I consider to be keepers. Several stood out, one I named Merlin, because it is very similar to Camelot and Penang Peach. Now I hope to get seeds from Merlin in 2018 and cross to introduce a few more desirable characteristics.
I selected Penang Peach because of its variations in flower colors, fantastic blooming, compact grower and history of producing quality seedling. Some of the seedling from Penang Peach are: Camelot, Australia, Barry’s Orange, California Sunset, CS3, Della Nui, Dtaeng Mo, Elsie, George Brown, J105, Parameno, Pink Diamond, Pride of Nui, Purple Jack, Tropical Aurora, Wasitee and many more are believed to be seedling of Penang Peach.
Choosing seeds for a specific goal? See Plumeria Seed Selection for the differences between growing a new cultivar and growing grafting rootstock.