Question
Dear Wayne,
I'm not sure what kind of orchids I have - 2 kinds, one with'flat' flowers and strong perfume, 2 with a sort of trumpet jutting out from upright petal and a downward sloping lower petal with 2 tiny yellow furry stripes - like a double carpet for bees to walk up to the centre of the flower (very faint or no perfume). The latter has been with me for almost 20 years, has been separated two or three times - last time into 7 plants!
I suddenly felt sad it had never produced offspring, and wonder how to pollinate it.The instrucions on this site are good, but I don't know the names of teh parts. Ther is a little sort of white 'cap' on the end of the top 'frill' on the 'trumpet'. I tried to pollinate two flowers. ONe ended up with pollen on the white cap,  the other's white cap broke off and exposed two yellow protrusions - are these the anthers where the pollen should go? I don't want to destroy the flowers to no purpose. It has three sprays of flowers which are shades of pinkish brown.

The other trumpety one has green flowers and also 3 sprays. I would like to see their fruit grow!

I hope you have time to help me - thankyou for your attention,

Very kind regards,
Gill Lyden


Answer
Gill, please be aware that if you are successful in producing a pod, there will be a 4-9 month waiting period for the pod to ripen.  Then, the pod and seeds need to be serilized and introduced into sterile, capped bottles of a special nutrient agar culture to germinate the seed. The bottles of nutrient agar (special for orchids) should be sterilized in a pressure cooker, capped, and let to stand for a few days to be sure no growth of bacteria or fungi are present. Only if the culture is truly sterile can you inoculate the seed under sterile cconditions.  If you are successful in the latter effort, you will need to replate the protocorms to a growth medium in 3-6 months.  This is an even more precarious stage, because the protocorms must be removed from the germinating bottles and introduced into new bottles with growth media-- all under sterile conditions.  If, during the transfer process, you introduce mold or bacterial spores, your transfer media and its seedling will be ruined. The seeds we are talking about are microscopic.  So, as you can see, once you have a pod of seeds, that is just the beginning of a challenging process to produce orchid seedlings.

That having been said, the orchid flower has a white structure in its center called a "column" because of its shape and the way it projects from the center of the flower.  The column is a specialized anther that contains packets of pollen called pollinia.  The column has an anther cap on its underside which must be removed to expose the pollen packets. The pollinia have sticky tails which enable them to be attached to a pollinator.  Using a toothpick you may remove the anther cap and then the pollinia.  Beneath the anther sap is a structure called the rostellum which separates the anther from the stigma.  The stigma is the female part of the column and is sticky to trap pollinia carried by a pollinator.  The pollinia you remove should be attached to your toothpick and placed on the stigma of this or another flower. In a few days the pollina will produce microscopic pollen tubes that grow down into the ovary which, in a week or two, will begin to swell as the start of an orchid fruit (ie seed pod).