Pollinating small flower stapeliads (artificially of course)

[Corradoerina]

Dear BCSS forum,

two quick questions (our first questions to the forum!)

1) how do you artificially pollinate small flowered stapeliads for seed production?

2) is self pollination in stapeliads (in general) considered an acceptable practice?

Regards

Corrado and Rina

[Wiebe]

Pollination of Stapeliads is a very complex matter. You need a microscope (magnification 10 - 30 times), the right equipment (I use fine needles used for acupunture) and steady hands. This difficult pollination is perhaps the main reason why very little seed of Stapeliads is offered. This hand-pollination can be done whit hsome of the larger Stapeliads (like Huernia, Orbea, Stapelia) but I never managed to pollinate any of the smaller Stapeliads by hand.

Most of the Stapeliads or self-sterile; self-pollination of this species will not result in any seed-formation!

Wiebe

[Wiebe]

..and a picture of myself in action trying to pollinate a Stapeliad.

Wiebe

[Corradoerina]

Dear Wiebe,

thanks for your kind answer. Can you lease suggest some good book or documentation concerning pollination of Stapeliads?

Regards

Corrado and Rina

[Torbjorn]

Hello,
Indeed, this is a complex group of plants.
Directly on cactus-mall there is an article:
http://www.cactus-mall.com/stapeliad/pollin.html
by Dr. Barad with pointers to some pictures.
I have also seen an article I cannot find just now, his setup to operate, and take pictures, under microscope on the flowers.

[Torbjorn]

And this article of course:
http://www.cactus-mall.com/stapeliad/index.html

[Acid John]

Those photographs of the hybrids are scarily similar to true species. This is going to get very complicated when it comes to identifying plants with unknown provanance.

[Aiko]

Now that I have a Pseudolithos in bloom, I'd like to get some seeds from it. I know pollinating asclepiads are not easy to do yourself. So I was thinking maybe it will be a good try to catch some flies, set them loose in an aquarium placed up side them, and if you have enough flies simply add the asclepiads.

Will that result in pollination after a few hours? Anyone tried that already?

[vaida]

Don't know if it will work, but it sure made me laugh

[Wiebe]

Anyone tried that already?

Yes, I tried that years ago. I my case I tried it with a strong smelling Orbea (O. caudata); in the enclosed environment the 'smelling compounds' reached high concentrations wich caused the death of all the flies within a few minutes! A few other remarks on your question:
* if you have got only one plant in flower this method will not lead to any succes if this species is self-sterile (I heard of seed-formation in collections with just one plant so this species might be self-fertile);
* not all the flies can do all the pollinations. So maybe you catch the wrong flies?
* why just try it for a few hours? To enhance your chances I would give the flies much more time.

Wiebe