Re: HYB: Seed Developement
- Subject: Re: [iris-talk] HYB: Seed Developement
- From: w*
- Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 14:29:03 -0500
- Priority: normal
On 8 Jul 01, at 13:51, Dennis Kramb wrote:
> >From what I have been told, once an ovary accepts pollen of one
> >variety, it does not accept pollen from another...
>
> This doesn't seem to make much sense from an evolutionary strategy
> point of view. Just my 2 cents...
>
> I think the bees are playing tricks on all you folks pollinating just 1
> stigmatic lip yet getting full seed pods. Again... just my 2 cents
> (without any scientific data). -- Dennis Kramb; dkramb@badbear.com
> Cincinnati, Ohio USA; USDA Zone 6 http://www.badbear.com/dkramb/
>
In this part of the world, I have not seen a bee in many years. I do
see a few bumblebees and have seen them go into a flower by following
the beard and going under the stigmatic lip. I have not seen the
bumblebee back out and go to the next fall on the same blossom. He
flies away to the next open flower and leaves the other two falls,
beards, stigmatic lips alone, yet he may pollinate that flower. If
the bee can do it with one stigmatic lip, why cannot man? (I have for
more years than I care to tell). I have watched bumblebees and
hummers and they seem to know which flowers they have already worked
and leave them alone. I see this daily outside my kitchen window
where the cypress vine grows up on the fence and is a mass of bloom.
Many years ago when I had more property devoted to irises, a man set
up honeybee bee hives on the property next to mine. At first, I was
sick - all of those bees ruining my crosses and making bee pods. As
it turned out, I had no more bee pods than usual, and the crosses
were not corrupted by the honeybees. It is the bumblebee that can
make the pod, and I doubt that he returns to the flower again after
he has gotten the nectar.
I have no idea how many crosses I have made or how many pods I have
obtained over many years of pollinating irises. I have had only two
or three pods I doubted the parentage, and as I said in a previous
post, never have I suspected multiple fathers.
Walter Moores
Enid Lake, MS USA 7/8
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