Ad
related to: hand pollination of orchids
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
For instance, hand-pollination is used with date palms to avoid wasting space and energy growing sufficient male plants for adequate natural pollination. Because of the level of labor involved, hand-pollination is only an option on a small scale, used chiefly by small market gardeners and owners of individual plants.
Pollination by flies, known as myophily, is the second most prevalent method of pollination among orchids, involving pollinators from twenty different dipteran families. [13] These flowers typically emit scents reminiscent of decaying organic materials, excrement, or carrion, which attract flies seeking food or suitable sites for egg deposition ...
Claims that pollination is achieved by stingless bees of the genus Melipona or hummingbirds have never been substantiated, though they do visit the flowers. [27] Even within the range of orchid bees, wild vanilla orchids have only a 1% chance of successful pollination. As a result, all vanilla grown today is pollinated by hand.
Hand pollination is the most reliable method in commercially grown vanilla. [9] Vanilla plantations require trees for the orchids to climb and anchor by its roots. [9] The fruit is termed "vanilla bean", though true beans are fabaceous eudicots not at all closely related to orchids.
Edmond Albius (c. 1829 – 9 August 1880) [1] was a horticulturalist from Réunion.Born into slavery, Albius became an important figure in the cultivation of vanilla. [2] At the age of 12, he invented a technique for pollinating vanilla orchids quickly and profitably.
The complex mechanisms that orchids have evolved to achieve cross-pollination were investigated by Charles Darwin and described in Fertilisation of Orchids (1862). Orchids have developed highly specialized pollination systems, thus the chances of being pollinated are often scarce, so orchid flowers usually remain receptive for very long periods ...
The plant starts flowering when three years old, and as the flowers only last for a day, they need to be hand-pollinated in a timely manner. The pods develop over a period of about nine months, and they are picked by hand when they turn reddish-brown. They are then sun-dried by day and placed in sweatboxes by night.
Since the orchid is an endangered species, hand pollination may be used to propagate the species artificially. Research has shown that cross pollination and pollination with a single pollinium increase the number and viability of seeds produced. [7] Unlike for some other species, fire does not induce or increase the flowering of C. behrii. [3]