Crossing Cactus - Is there a random factor?

[Gallica]

I am fairly new to planting and have been doing a lot of crossing to create a bank of both seeds and pollinating plants. All has been going well using the information gathered on various sites, crosses have been coming out as expected........until today....

In a large batch of plants crossed...most were normal, but the seeds gathered off the tri barrel and barrel cactuses were not what I expected them to be. I am very careful when crossing and could not have made that many mistakes...I could understand one going wrong but not as many as there are.

For example I crossed a blue tribarrel with a blue tribarrel...expecting a bright blue tribarrel....and got bright blue rushes. Red tribarrel x red tribarrel gave bright red small palm instead of bright red tribarrel. A red barrel cactus x yellow barrel cactus has given an orange small palm? Is there a randomness to cactus crossing that I don't know about....or perhaps I have discovered a bug?

The seeds I identified using poppies dust and all the cactuses in this batch are wrong. I will plant them anyway just in case the right ones grow and its a bug with the identification ..... clutching at straws I know....but oh well might as well live in hope..

 

[DevilsOwn]

seems a side-effect of the phenomenon described in this thread

if so, then the question would be, fix it and lose the new stuffs, or leave it and have a totally unreliable cross-pollination process for cacti?

 

[Gallica]

Thankyou for your reply Devils Own. However the thread you directed me too adresses the Flowery Cactus type of "cactus" issue which is not what occured here. This thread is most interesting however and I have read it thoroughly....it is what got me into all this mad planting in the first place.....heheheh...I now have quite a few of the new coloured plants.

My problem lies with ordinary Barrel and Tri-barrel cactuses.

 

[Beastmaster]

The only abnormalities known up until now have been with the flowery cactus. Perhaps more testing is needed. My last 3 "new" bonsai are supposed to bloom today, completing my set. After that I planned to do alot of crossing hoping for the black and white bonsai. I'll report back any abnormailities I see from that.

 

[Gallica]

Today some more of the same batch of plants were ready to harvest, something weird is happening here !

blue prickly pear x blue prickly pear gave me bright blue ponytail palm
red prickly pear x red prickly pear gave me bright red snowdrops
yellow prickly pear x yellow prickly pear gave me bright yellow fern
blue prickly pear x red prickly pear gave me purple pampas
red prickly pear x yellow prickly pear gave me orange tribarrel cactus
yellow tribarrel cactus x blue tribarrel cactus gave me green water plant
red tribarrel cactus x blue tribarrel cactus gave me purple prickly pear

Has anybody got any ideas on what is happening here??

 

[Sara Of Baja]

bright green barrel cactus x bright green barrel cactus resulted in bright green lilies.

 

[Beastmaster]

So far all of the abnormal results reported have been from crossing 2 plants of the same cactus species.

 

[Sara Of Baja]

So far all of the abnormal results reported have been from crossing 2 plants of the same cactus species.

We've been trying to come up with prickly pear cactus seeds by cross pollinating every possible plant cross on the cross pollination menu ... so far no prickly pear. I didn't document what type of seeds we did get, just tossed them, and tried the next cross.