Smart cactus

[Torsten]

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.

[spiraleyes]

my pachanoi has 8 buds on it ,1 flowered about 2 weeks ago now 2 are going.

wondered the reason,thanks

[somnif]

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.

[somnif]

Not to fear - the green, prickly thing

decided to flower today!

[somnif]

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.