chrisg wrote: ↑Thu Oct 13, 2022 12:33 pm
I have 3 bloodspots at different stages of flowering at the moment. These are all from different sources, and as i only had enough agave pollen to cross the first plant, I thought it would be fun to try a little experiment. I have collected pollen from the first plant, using it to pollinate the second, and so on. I am expecting a range of plants from totally different, to similar looking. I will also be trying different things to see if I can encourage more offsets / bulbils but suspect the variation in the plants will have a greater effect on that.
Chris, are you saying that your 'Bloodspot' has produced offsets and/or bulbils, or is this you merely hoping these will be produced? My single flowering event produced neither offsets nor bulbils. Some folk have reported offsets but I don't recall anyone reporting bulbil formation.
The reason we might expect some bulbils is that Agave macroacantha, one of its parents, does produce bulbils, but again this isn't a given - my plant of this sp. produced only a couple of offsets during its lifetime and NO bulbils when it flowered 8 years ago. BTW the wasps loved the flowers and ate voraciously the tepals (aka petals) to get at the nectar.
Cheers,
Colin
FBCSS
FCSSA
Fellow of the Linnean Society (FLS)
Member of the IOS
Honorary Research Associate, The Open University
Hi Colin, so I am hoping to see if there is anything I can do to encourage offsets and or bulbils. My last flowering bloodspot produced 2 offsets, and i know lots of others that have. But I have also seen photos of plants in the US that produced bulbils, so it is obviously capable of it. I suspect that heat and or soil temp may play an important part in bulbils. IN the Uk where I have see bulbils on mangaves they have always been in controlled environments like green houses, and mine that have have all be inside on a floor with underfloor heating.
I am not surprised about wasps, they do produce a lot of nectar and I have also noticed that they smell more like agave flowers than a lot of mangaves do. There is definitely that very distinctive smell to the greenhouse right now.
