Hey Gary,
Here are a couple pics. The first is a close-up of colorata and if you look at the top between say eleven o'clock and one o'clock you can see some pollen on the anthers. I have a heck of a time with pollen as my neighbor is a bee keeper, so I have to try to beat his bugs to my pollen.<g> As a rule, I tie closed the first day bloom of any flower I plan to harvest pollen from.
I collect nectar from any available first day bloom with a syringe...again asap, before the bees have had a chance to taint it with stray pollen.
Then I put the anthers I've collected and the nectar in a vial and make a pollen slurry of sorts. You can see in the picture the fluid has turned yellow and pollen grains can be seen on the side of the vial. Then I pour it into the first day bloom of the target pod parent after I remove in fluid from the nectar cup.
It really is a simple straight forward process. I don't bother covering the bloom as I feel the abundance of added pollen will overwhelm any stray pollen that is deposited later. Okay, if I am feeling real finicky I might, but then I will have also strained the stigmatic fluid I first collected through filter paper as well. Extremely rare I go through that much trouble, I think I've only done so when I'm trying crosses between subgenera.
Two big things are knowing if the pod parent is fertile and the pollen viable. A microscope will tell you if the pollen is good and for the pod parent, I usually first hit it with heavy does of mixed pollen that I know to be potent to see if I get seed.
Hope this all makes sense, but if not, ask any questions you may have.
Topic: Can one or the three of you post pics on the steps you take to polinating lilies (Read 4924 times)
