365Caws is now in its 16th year of publication. If I am unable to post daily, I hope readers who love the natural world and fiberarts will seize those days to read the older material. Remember that this has been my journey as well, so you may find errors in my identifications of plants. I have tried to correct them as I discover them. Likewise, I have refined fiberarts techniques and have adjusted recipes, so search by tags to find the most current information. And thank you for following me!
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
Match-making
Day 202: It's time for me to play match-maker for the Akebia vines again. Experience has taught me that the purple male flowers do not produce viable pollen, so the cross must be made between white males and purple females if there is to be a crop of fruit, and even though the two vines are now intertwined to some degree, the downward-facing flowers will undoubtedly always require some pollination assistance on my part. To that end, I was up the ladder with an artist's round sable paintbrush a few days ago, tickling pollen from the anthers of mature white flowers and transferring it to the stigmata (receptive tips) of the purple ones. In the close-up photo, you can see where the pollen has adhered to the sticky substance of the receptive stigmata. In theory (and usually in practice), each one of these will develop a fruit roughly four inches long and about an inch and a quarter in diameter. They're not the easiest things in the world to eat, but I have developed a liking for the mildly sweet taste of the pulp. That said, I have been unable to find any recipes which use it, so I eat it straight from the pod.
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