FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Day 6 after the flower opened and yes, we have no pollen.

Panman wrote: ↑Mon Oct 03, 2022 2:14 pm Day 6 after the flower opened and yes, we have no pollen.

The pollen is inside the anthers. When the anthers turn almost completely yellow you can remove them to harvest the pollen. Do it over a mirror. The side it comes out is the side that was attached to the flower.
I hope this makes sense. You will not see pollen on the outside of the anthers

I've been doing the electric toothbrush thing seeing if it will release pollen. I'll try pulling one of the anthers off and trying that.

Not ripe, too ripe, just right?

Just right. Let them dry for a day or two. I put mine in an origami envelope. After that hold them with tweezers by the round end over a mirror. Buzz the narrow end ( circled) with your electric toothbrush or tuning fork. The pollen will "poof" out. That's a technical term

Oooh. I can't wait for some poof!

So I played around with a dried anther and picked it apart with tweezers. I did indeed get a poof but quickly realized that collecting the poofed pollen would be a challenge. My solution was to dry the anthers as suggested and then put them in a centrifuge vial. I then used the electric toothbrush to vibrate the vial. While I didn't see a poof, I'd did see a fine layer of pollen collect on the walls of the vial. I scraped some off with a paint brush and applied it to the flower that just opened today. I'll do that for the next couple of days and hope that I hit the timing right.

It looks like we have liftoff! I may have some heli seeds soon. I don't know if they will be viable or not, but it will be fun to find out.