BCSS - Forum

Now you are showing your age Chris.
Incidentally, both he and James Callaghan had farms here in Sussex!

Years ago I read about manual pollination of flowers. I don,t recall them being succulents though. The procedure entailed removing all sepals, petals etc, to ensure the stigma was fully exposed ready to receive pollen. Would this be possible with our plants ? Cheers

Maybe terry's next sales will be 'head hair' from his trips to the barbers

I got my current supply of horse hairs off a barbed wire fence surrounding a horse's field.

BrianMc
Perfect. It's called recycling! Horses rub up against gates and leave material too...... Nobody mentions very fine gauge wire?

Reasonable suggestion but wire would be too smooth to hold much if any pollen. The reason Terry uses his hair is that the sticky follicle holds pollen......horse hair is coarse so holds pollen.

From what I've seen of examples on the internet, I think Diane's brushes are also impractical as still too broad to reach down into some of the deep set stigmas some cono flowers have without destroying the tube.

Many different types of sweeping brush bristles are thin enough, course enough and cheap enough to do the job.

BTW......Steven Hammer calls his particular brush bristles, "stud rods".

ChrisR
Thinking about what you said and horse hair, led me to dogs! I have two German shepherds who shed! Everywhere!
Their tales are very long and fluffy! The hair is course too. Anyone want some to try? I could certainly supply plenty......

ChrisR wrote:
From what I've seen of examples on the internet, I think Diane's brushes are also impractical as still too broad to reach down into some of the deep set stigmas some cono flowers have without destroying the tube.

Rigger brushes or signwriters'/coachliner brushes are fine, and not expensive. I suggest get ox hair. Something like the below, with 3" hair. There are similar but thicker. Oxhair is a "soft" hair, unlike eg the hard hog bristle used for oils or shaving brushes.


If this is still too wide it's simple, using a razor just trim hair off from near the ferrule - you can go down to a single hair if you want (and have spares). For where you don't need such a long or thin brush, pony hair artist brushes have coarse hair and are very cheap, you can get a whole "school" set for a couple of pounds. Or use them to sellotape your long ox hair offcuts to!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A-S-Handover ... TW80qGfDOg

So Diane was right (I should have known...) about the brushes. I didn't see any as long as that with a quick search. They certainly look like they'd do the job as Ragamala describes and cheap enough too.

Thanks for the offer of dog tail hair Jane but not for me.

Hello all, I suppose that, whichever the solution, it must be considered as a "one shot" solution? One should not reuse a hair or a brush that has already been used to pollinate a flower to pollinate another one to avoid hybridizations?