Torsten Posted February 8, 2002 Trichocerei are smart cacti. My terscheckii had 7 buds and flowered with 5 flowers in one night last year. I successfully pollinated 2 of them. The two undeveloped buds fell off after a few weeks. This year the same happened, except that none of the flower got pollinated. The 5 flowers died and fell off and I was expecting the other two buds to just fall off after a few weeks. 2 months later one of the buds is stretching and developing into a flower and the other bud is still dormant. Even though this species flowers with all flowers in one night, it keeps a couple of undeveloped ones just in case the flowers do not get pollinated, and tries again after a month or two. Very smart. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
spiraleyes Posted February 8, 2002 my pachanoi has 8 buds on it ,1 flowered about 2 weeks ago now 2 are going. wondered the reason,thanks Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
somnif Posted February 8, 2002 I tend to get three, err, "flushes" out of my terscheckii X. A couple of days ago I had a go at pollenating it with some frozen pollen Ramon sent me - I still haven't discovered if this was succesful or not. One of my San Pedro's is about to flower for the first time ever for me after owning them for more than 8 years! However, I am deeply worried about it's possible timing, Melbourne's mild weather makes me think that it is going to wait 'till I am away for EB2k+2 to flower :-( (I leave Melbourne on Tuesday) Any ideas on how to speed up the flowering date? I have seriously considered bring my spikey friend inside and sticking it in front of a heater though I suspect this would be misguided. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
somnif Posted February 10, 2002 Not to fear - the green, prickly thing decided to flower today! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
somnif Posted February 20, 2002 Hmm, three replies in a row. Anyhow, I come back from the conference in hope of seeing some sort of results from my pollination and sadly it looks like I failed. Using Ramons San Pedro pollen on the terscheckii X. yeilded nothing. Using the pollen from the terscheckii X. on my flowering San Pedro left a ping- pong ball size green mass which had fallen off. It looks nothing like what I suppose a "fruit" to look like, more like some left overs from the base of the flower so I am assuming no success there. So where did I go wrong? Ramons pollen had been frozen after travelling through the post. Has anyone ever had success with frozen pollen before? The terscheckii X. pollen had sat around for about five days waiting for the 'pedro to flower. Both cacti were pollinated on day one of the flower opening. My technique involved taking the pollen and brushing it over the central stalk (the terminology fails me) Ramon had helpfully pointed me to a web page which gave some good pictures re: hand pollination so I am reasonably sure I was poking in the right place. If my technique is not at fault then the only obvious conclusion for me is that the pollen doesn't have a very long shelf life. (perhaps I should've frozen my terscheckii pollen for those days waiting for the 'pedro's flower to open) Oh well, better luck for me next year. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites