The skin on some Brugmansia seed pods can be as tough as leather, allowing a ripe pod to hang on the plant for weeks and weeks after it has dried.  For others, the skin disintegrates in a matter of days.  Within a couple of weeks after ripening the pod may look like the one pictured below.I caught this pod just in time.  When I held it to snip it off the plant, it completely fell apart leaving me clutching a handful of Angel Trumpet seeds.  Fortunately the weather had been calm for the week ...

In recent weeks I have been harvesting ripe seed pods from my Spring Brugmansia crosses.  After two consecutive years of freezes and very few seed pods, this bountiful seed pod harvest is well appreciated.Our summer heat arrived early this year so many of the seed pods were smaller than usual.  This means I have fewer seeds from each cross than I had anticipated, This does not mean that I have a shortage of seeds to sow, I'll just have fewer seeds to share with members of the International ...

Going into this weeks freeze I was concerned about the 100+ pods that have already set on my Angel Trumpets.  The pods are in various stages of development, from a few weeks old to 6-8 weeks old.  I have some great crosses going this year including these using Brugmansia Lizzy as the pod parent.  Here's a young Lizzy x Angel's Gold Face pod.After two back to back frigid winters, I am determined to keep my plants alive this winter.  This week's hard freeze brought the temperatures down to the ...

Many of my Brugmansia seedlings devastated by this past winter's freeze are finally starting to bloom.  It is amazing how resilient these plants can be.   One that really caught my attention tonight was this beautiful seedling from a cross between Orange Zest and an unknown cultivar.Orange Zest is a new cultivar I introduced and registered last fall.  It came from a cross Liz Fichtl made between Jacayna and The Chief.  These blooms have a strong resemblance to those of Orange Zest, but are ...

A couple of readers have asked where all my Angel Trumpet blooms come from so I decided to post a few photos of my primary growing areas.  Today's photos are from what I call my brug jungle.  This is an area where I tie the largest brugmansia seedlings to rows of rope to help keep them upright.  The seedlings are in 3-4 gallon size pots and have to be at least 6 feet tall to earn their place in one of these rows.  This photo shows older seedlings carried over from 2008.  Many suffered damage ...

I just found my first Angel Trumpet seed pod of the fall season!  One disadvantage of hybridizing brugmansia in Florida is that it is nearly impossible to get crosses to take and set pods when the temps are in the 90's.  A couple of weeks ago we had a mini cold snap that lasted for a couple of days.  The first night it was cool out I went outside and pollinated about 30 blooms.   A couple of days later the temps were back up in the 90's and breaking records.  Because of that i did not expect ...

Dazed and confused is a great description for these Angel Trumpet blooms.  This is the first seedling of my cross between brugmansia Inca Sun and Masquerade to bloom.  While I was hoping for an ever-blooming yellow Masquerade type, I'm not quite ready to give up hope.  I have a bunch more from this cross that will be blooming this year and hopefully at least a couple will be worthy of holding over.  I also plan to cross any keepers I have from this cross back to Inca Sun.

After planting seeds from about 40 immature brugmansia seed pods I'm excited to report that about 1/3 already have seeds sprouting!  I'm sure more crosses will sprout in the next week or two.  This is way cool because I had some important crosses I was afraid I might have lost in the freeze.  There are at least 30 more seeds pods that were damaged in the freeze that I plan to plant next weekend. My guess is that I have about the same number that did not get damaged that are still growing on ...