Day 271: The milkweed is blooming! The plants bore only a few flowers last year, and while I had hoped that an appropriate pollinator would stop by, no pods ever developed. There will be more opportunity this year, though, because there are many more flowers on plants in two patches. Surely some innocent bug will get a leg trapped long enough to pick up some pollinia. That's how milkweed works. Pollen transfer occurs in sticky packets, not dry grains. A bug's leg gets caught inside a slit in the stigma, wiggles around as the insect tries to free itself, and the sticky pollen packets (which generally occur in pairs) get tangled in the hairs on its leg. The insect then visits another milkweed flower, makes a similar mis-step, gets trapped again, and in its efforts to free itself, the pollinia comes off inside the stigma of the second plant. And it has to be a different plant. Milkweed is not self-fertile. Sidebar: I have seen a video of a botanist attempting to cross-pollinate a rare milkweed. Gives me ideas, that, and I'm sure by now, you know that I enjoy botanical match-making. Anybody thinking there might be an experiment on the horizon? Worth a try, but I might not be able to tell who was the responsible party, me or a bug. Not exactly a controlled experiment, but if I get milkweed pods, I'd be happy. Tweezers...where'd I put the dissecting tweezers?
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