Mark, was it difficult getting seed to form in either direction of that cross ? It’s one I’ve been very curious to try, and now that I have the right plants I will although maybe not till next year. The fact that you got seed in both directions is pretty inspiring. Will you sow the pandurata x balatas seed? Unfortunately I agree with your assessment of pandurata flavor, I don’t consider it edible.
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No, it wasn’t all that difficult, although I’m sure I damaged and wasted several flowers in the process. Problem is I can’t be sure that the seeds produced were actually a result of my transferring pollen. Only way to know would be to grow them out and see if anything new showed up. The batatas seeds didn’t sprout, I still have the pandurata seeds but I’m not sure where.
There are some little bugs that apparently like pandurata and they infected my batatas plants after bringing it to the garden. I got rid of the pandurata plants and in a couple of years the bugs went away on their own. They don’t hurt root production at all, but they ruin seed capsules. I’m guessing that the hardy, perennial nature of pandurata might give them what they need to overwinter and without that they died out. I’ve never seen them before or since.
If I mess with this again, I’ll take (non-self-compatible) potted batatas plants down the road and set them among the pandurata plants, then if they make seeds, plant all of them the next season.
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I have a few flowering batatas plants right now and just found a flowering pandurata down the road. Maybe I can try a couple of attempts this season still. It’s interesting how it was at least easy to get seed in your case, because Ipomoea apparently has a lot of crossing barriers.
After finding local vines I searched up pandurata and found a comment on the Nomad Seed page post about a pandurata hybrid. This sounds like a legit account, and if true shows that pandurata has a much wider crossing ability (at least as a mother in this combo) than most Ipomoea. Pandurata x digitata should be more distant than pandurata x batatas.
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