How to pollinate Haworthia:

Different people have different pollination techniques. My technique is based partially on a technique described in a great article by Steven Hammer (25 ways to look at Haworthia. CSSA journal 70(4) 171-176) partially on conversations with other haworthia growers like Mary Parisi and partially on my work experience crossing Arabidopsis.

Click here to see a stylized picture of a flower. It's not that different than a Haworthia flower. Familiarize yourself with the different reproductive organs in the flower. 

An important factor to remember about pollinating haworthia is that as soon as the flowers open the pollen is usually ready, but the stigma, the female part of the plant is not receptive to pollen yet. The stigmas become receptive a few days later. So use pollen from newly opened flowers to pollinate the stigmas of older flowers.  You can tell when the

stigmas are receptive because they expand a bit.

I use very fine tweezers to pollinate.

First define the male and female parents. As soon as the flower of the female parent opens use the tweezers to carefully remove the three lower petals. Then carefully  emasculate (remove the anthers) from the flowers being careful not to damage the stigma. In the next couple of days watch the stigma. It will elongate and swell slightly. 1 or 2 days after emasculation start pollinating the stigma.  For the male parent use flowers that have just opened. Remove the lower three petals and examine the anthers. Most of them should be covered with pollen. If not use a different flower or wait a day. Use the  tweezers the remove a filament stem with the anther attached.  Gently rub (if

you do this too hard the stigma will be damaged) the anther on the stigma

until you see that some pollen has been transferred. Do this for two or

three days in a row. It takes some practice.  The best time to pollinate is in the

middle of the day but I usually have to do it as soon as I get home from work. There is  variability in how much pollen is shed and this can affect pollination outcomes. You will know that the cross was successful by the formation of a seedpod. When the seeds are ready the top of the seedpod will start to open and you can harvest the entire pod. You can cross almost any haworthia species although more distant crosses are more difficult.

You can also try using this pollination technique to self-pollinate. Self-pollination may give interesting results if you are working with an especially nice clone. The offspring will not be genetically identical (unless the starting plant has been selfed for several generations) but you may get back interesting slight variations of the original plant. Click here for an example. One thing to be aware of is that the offspring of self pollinated plants are usually slower growing and I've gotten extremely small slow growing runts in some cases. In my experience, some Haworthia like H. major and certain H. comptoniana are self fertile and will produce lots of seeds if self pollinated. Others seem to be not at all self fertile and have never produced seed from self pollination. Some Haworthia like some of my splendens will produce a small number of seeds if self pollinated.