Scilla madeirensis

Lee Poulsen wpoulsen@pacbell.net
Wed, 30 Oct 2019 11:49:27 PDT
There are some species that don’t seem to attract bees or other pollinators in my yard. There are plenty of bees.

With those, I play bee. I got a small soft hair paint brush, and all I do is literally dab each flower then dab another flower and another and so on as if the paint brush were a bee. If I have two pots of the species I go back and forth between the two shoving the paint brush tip into the center of each flower until I’ve touched every flower in both pots. Ever since I started doing that with Tecophilaea, when I bother to do it, I get a lot of seed set. When I don’t do it, I’m lucky if even one flower produces a seed pod. 

I have three bulbs of Scilla madeirensis that I got at the same time from the same (commercial) source. I don’t know if they’re all the same clone. But I grow them in separate pots. I never got seeds to form until early this year when I tried the paintbrush technique, and a surprising number of seed pods formed, most of which produced mature seeds.

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a
Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m

> On Oct 29, 2019, at 10:24 AM, Brian Whyer via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:
> 
> I have found that if I haven't got them in flower in time for our bees to do it for me the easiest way is to put two pots side by side and push the 2 flower heads together, each pair of flowers at a time. I get almost 100% that way.


>    On Tuesday, 29 October 2019, 17:05:39 GMT, Kenneth Preteroti via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote:  
> 
> I apologize sending this twice. Not sure if the pictures went through. Two different clones. Hand pollinated. Hope I get seeds. 
> 

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