FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I was surprised this week with this flower in my Heterodoxa x minor, I thought it was going to be a big pitcher, since it like "stretched" last week, but no, it was a flower, now I really don't know how many flowers will they be inside, how will I be able to pollinate it, or if it would be better to try TC on it?

Wow, ill be watching the thread!
I only have one heli, but about to buy 6 more species.

Yeah, I started with this one on january, now I have 5 species, but no idea of how to handle the flowering

I think, compared to other cps the helis are not as common, which is sad.

That is true, I think because normally as the most people with collections live in temperate countries, they are exotic plants for them, not as Sarracenia, that might even be grown outdoors; that and taking in count the high prices these plants may have, and the care suggestions in the web and all, they seem the "most difficult" plant to take care of, and because of that, they are not as widespread.

Start looking for pollen to use before it opens so u can get seeds:)

The thing is where, because anything I may get would take more than 2 weeks of travel almost!

Yikes! Well at the very least collect pollen from this flower to trade or use later if you get another flower.

coline
you have to have the first flower open and ripen to extract the pollen , then pollinate the second flower with the first flowers pollen , only way unless like me you have many many helis flowering for 3/4 of the year , I extract pollen and pollinate many of my own hybrids and got many in to T/C all ready , still coming to age in my jars. extracting pollen is very tricky and is a mater of timing and getting your flowers to release its pollen , your conditions need to be right for each specie or hybrid so it will release its pollen for you , the anthers maturity looking right is the key , not all others release pollen at the same age or stage of ripeness , lucky for you H.minor x hetrodoxa is one of the easiest ones to extract from , but from personal experience of several years or more the first attempts can be very frustrating difficult . your heli will put out up to 6 flowers . but usually 4 or 5 is most common .
A very few select people through the world are successfully extracting pollen and pollinating these flowers , I know only 3 others beside myself that do it on a consistent bases .
J

Well, good, thanks, I'm just entering vacations so I have time to carefully see how ripe are the flowers, and then try pollen collection. We will see how many flowers does it make, and then hope I have the skills or the right conditions for polen to be released then.
I expect that once I have pollen, then the pollination would be the easy part!

you got my pm / message i sent , I hope right ?
john

No, not at all

coline wrote:No, not at all

look in your in message box , important message for you there either in the user control box above of in your profile section under messages

J

I saw it, thanks a lot! Amazing!

Look, the flower is advancing, after growing some 30+cm!