Hop seeds in my cones?

[B-Hoppy]

I've had them go from a dark grey to very pale, almost cream colored. Most are grey-tan colored. Once the burrs are pollinated, a 'baby bump' appears in the cones as they mature. Actually, the bracteole that carries the seed will become much larger than the other in the pair and if you look close at the cones, you can find them pretty easy. I took a few pictures a few years ago and it shows pretty well what happens. The ones on the left are not seeded and the right ones are. Pretty cool actually!

 

[Northern_Brewer]

do you think it is absolutely unheard of, or just rare, for fertile crosses to happen between plants with different chromosome numbers? I (think I) know that I. nil x I. purpurea was successful, but can't recall their chromosome numbers.

There could be some wild H. lupulus here, so I haven't ruled that out.

I've just clocked that you're in Japan, which means you should have wild lupulus in the form of H. lupulus var. cordifolius (or Karahanasou apparently). My money would still be on that rather than japonicus, without ruling out the latter.

If you've got mismatched chromosomes then the only way for cell division to work is to have two or more sets of chromosomes from each parent - polyploidy. Which isn't impossible, but it's much, much rarer than getting viable seed from species with the same number of chromosomes.

 

[Blue-Frog]

Thank you both, B-Hoppy and Northern brewer.

B-Hoppy - Have you found the light cream colored seeds just viable as the darker colored ones?

Northern Brewer - I had totally forgotten about H. lupulus var. cordifolius thinking it was somewhere else in asia.

Do you know how they can be differentiated ? or, know perhaps of an online taxonomic key to the genus?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I don't know about cordifolius in particular but in general japonicus has five or more lobes on each leaf (but may go down to 3 at the ends of the bine), whereas lupulus generally has fewer (but is more 3-5 than a hard cut-off).

I wouldn't sweat it - it only takes one plant half a mile away to pollinate your bines, and finding the culprit is very much a needle-in-haystack job. Even in Kent, which is supposedly a hotbed of hop sex, you'd struggle to find wild males unless you really go looking for them.

 

[Blue-Frog]

Thanks NB. I am just curious who's visiting my girls!

One new find... after becomming specifically interested in the possibility that there might be more seeds in my garden, I checked a few other plants and found a single well formed seed in an Ultra cone.

Ultra is said to be triploid.
And I couldn't cofirm it yet, but I think Cascade is diploid....

Does this shead any light on who the male might be?

Could both the cascade and the Ultra have been fertilized by the same male?

In anycase I will see if anything grows.

 

[PapaBearJay]

Yes, Ultra is triploid and Cascade is diploid. Ploidy doesn't shed light on the male parent since neither is a male plant. As NB states HLvarC is native to Japan and pollen can travel long distances. While you might not know where the nearest male is, there probably one about.

Hop(e) for the best!

 

[B-Hoppy]

Thank you both, B-Hoppy and Northern brewer.

B-Hoppy - Have you found the light cream colored seeds just viable as the darker colored ones?

Northern Brewer - I had totally forgotten about H. lupulus var. cordifolius thinking it was somewhere else in asia.

Do you know how they can be differentiated ? or, know perhaps of an online taxonomic key to the genus?

I really cannot say for sure about the viability by the appearance of the different seeds other than to say that each different genotype tends to have seeds that look unique to itself (genotype A may have all very large and tan colored seeds and genotype B has seeds that are half as big and are dark grey, etc.)

As for morphological differences between the different types, check out this page: https://www.ars.usda.gov/pacific-we...sitory/docs/ncgr-corvallis-humulus-germplasm/. I seem to remember they gave pretty in depth descriptions of the differences but can't seem to locate the exact page,, they may have redone the site recently and omitted that page?

 

[B-Hoppy]

ps: these are some photos of a patch of japonicus I came across this past Summer:

 

[Blue-Frog]

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate your comments and images.