dragon fruit pollination

[MattyB]

I've found that my White fleshed variety is self pollinating but the red fleshed variety need cross pollination from the white one. The bee in this pic is sitting on the female part and the male anthers surround that. Hand pollination is very easy. You can just grab a pinch of anthers from one flower and set it upon the female part of another. We've got 100% pollination that way.

[BigFrond]

Cool! I believe that's a dove nest. My mom's dragon tree set up like yours and her trellis has a dove nest too (actually 3 years in a row).

[Stevetoad]

I had one flower. I tried to pollinate it with itself. Doesn't look like it worked

[MattyB]

Unless it's the white fleshed variety it won't work. We've tried to pollinate the red fleshed ones, both within it's own flower, and with another flower from the same plant, and it doesn't work. Do you have any flowers opening this week Steve? Maybe we can trade pollen. I've got flowering red fleshed ones now but no white ones coming up for another few weeks so they are just going to waste.

The nest is a dove's nest. They've already had a baby this spring and now they're having another two. I can usually get really close and even work on pollination within a few feet of whoever is sitting on the nest. But this mornign I scared them off. They come back pretty quick and it doesn't seem to affect the eggs.

[Stevetoad]

That was the only flower I had. I don't have any buds that I can see.

[MattyB]

buds

[rprimbs]

Don't you pollinate dragon fruit at night -- or at least in the evening when the the flowers are opened up? I've heard of people wearing miners lights to do it.

Were those pictures taken in the evening?

[MattyB]

No, they are open during the morning and late afternoon too, but they'll close at midday if it's hot and sunny

[Alan_Tampa]

I had physical graffiti. Red and without hand pollination set a large crop. Then January 2010 turned it into mush.

Alan