Strawberry Raspberry Hybrid - other plants

I wrote several previous posts on attempting to create true intergeneric strawberry x raspberry hybrids.  I also wrote a post on how while intergeneric hybrids are sometimes possible and all signs point to my attempt being successful I am not certain if I succeeded.  I can't be certain that it is a hybrid unless the plant is tested genetically.  I contacted a genetics lab before Christmas, had a bit of email exchange with them, but they are yet to tell me a price to have my plant tested. 

Over summer my original strawberry raspberry hybrid plant suffered badly.  It does not look good and hopefully it survives winter.  If this plant does survive there is a good chance it will grow and fruit again in spring.

As well as my first plant I had a lot of seed left over from that first attempt, so I planted more of this seed and ended up with a few more plants. Some are much like the original attempt, others are a bit different.  The differences are rather interesting.

Yellow white berries and elongated petiolules

Again there was a low germination rate, lots of albinism, and a lot of mysterious early seedling deaths.  Most of the plants display the same sorts of morphological oddities as the first hybrid.  These have taken over ten months to flower, as opposed to the five months of the strawberry parent.  The flowers tend to be irregular and inconsistent.  Leaf shape is variable and usually displays greatly elongated petiolules which is uncharacteristic for the strawberry parent species.

All of this suggests that they may be true hybrids.  To be clear, I can not be certain unless they are genetically tested.

Six petals and a stamen in the wrong place

They all look much like strawberry plants.  Most produce red berries much like the initial hybrid.  One thing that surprised me is some of them produce yellow/white fruit.  Which is remarkable considering that the strawberry parent has red fruit.

I have never had a red fruited strawberry produce a yellow or white fruited seedling, which indicates that red is probably dominant and the parent is likely homozygous for red fruiting genes.  If the parent plants were heterozygous for the yellow/white gene I would have seen a lot of other yellow fruited plants before now.

Strawberry x raspberry hybrid can be quit lump

One plant even produces light coloured berries that are a little bit pink!  Unfortunately there were very few berries.  I will have to take more pictures of this in spring when they start producing fruit again.  As they are flowering in cold weather not all of the flowers are setting fruit. 

I left the berries in the pictures below to over ripen to see if they would turn more red.  They stayed pink no matter how long I left them on the plant.  I left one to the point of rotting, and it still stayed pink and did not turn red.  Considering the parent strawberry has only ever produced red fruited seedlings this pink fruited plant came as quite a surprise.

I am quite fond of the pink berry plant.  These produced rather pretty pink berries that smell nice and taste nicely sweet, so I hope they turn out to be productive in warmer weather and I can somehow divide it.  

Pink strawberry raspberry hybrid

Only time till tell which of these plants, if any, are worth keeping. 

I also planted some seeds from the original hybrid and currently have three F2 plants that I am growing out.  So far they are about ten months old and none of them have flowered and none have produced any runners.  I will be interested to see what they turn into.

Extra petals, flowers subtended by a leaf

Only 5 petals on this one, this plant never sets fruit

Yellow/white strawberry raspberry hybrid

Unlike the original hybrid or the pink fruited plant, the plant that is producing yellow or white berries is a bit bland, they also aren't very fragrant.  This may be due to the berries ripening in cooler weather.  In spring when it starts to fruit again hopefully they taste a bit nicer.

Similar to the original hybrid, these yellow/white ones have achenes on the outside, and can be a bit lumpy and bumpy.  Even though the strawberry parent produces a huge number of runners from a young age this yellow fruiting one has not produces any runners as yet.  It will be interesting to see what happens.

I sent samples of these plants to the CSIRO who tested them and determined that they are true hybrids.  The results can be seen here.

While I don't sell these, I do sell some strawberry plants when I have enough to spare.  If you are interested they are listed on my for sale page.