They had to remove indehiscent male flowers and dissect anthers under a
microscope to acquire pollen early enough to pollinate the females. The male
flowers that were "ripened" with heat and ethylene exposure appear to be most
successful, but could it be that this may simply be due to timing? See their
web page for details, although it was really an amazingly low tech kind of
operation using film canisters, a pilot light on a kitchen stove, and
over-ripe apples. It might be interesting to repeat and expand upon this
experiment in some future Amorphophallus titanum flowering, or possibly in
some other genera.
The pollination chronology page can also be accessed using the technical
details link from this before-mentioned page about the seedlings:
http://www.huntington.org/BotanicalDiv/TitanSeed.htm
Donna
In a message dated 12/04/2001 8:09:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,
ju-bo@email.msn.com writes:
<< Yes, thanks for pointing this out. I GUESS they would have had to remove
a
part of the male spadix BEFORE it opened, as the female flowers are 'ready'
at least a day or two before the pollen is produced, so Donna, do you have
any idea exactly how they manage to 'collect' the immature pollen and
'ripen' it??
>>
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