I have rules for myself in writing this blog. One of them is never make snap judgements based on scanty observations, like I did when I wrote about the lack of pollinators for asiatic lilies in the previous post. There are, in fact, a variety of potential pollinators and I saw some of them in action today.
A little syrphid fly was busily tearing into the pollen and left it hanging in shreds. In the process, the fly pretty well covered itself with pollen from head to tip of abdomen.
A few minutes later, the fly perched on the stigma pollen receptacle for a few minutes, moving its mouth parts, either cleaning off pollen and depositing it on the stigma or lapping up some of the sticky stuff on the stigma surface — I couldn’t really tell.
In addition to the syrphid fly visits, several small sweat bees were flitting between flowers on the lily stem clearly carrying pollen on their legs and abdomen.
Even house fly-like flies visited the nectaries of the flowers, crawling in and around the petals, and brushing against the anthers.
A few wasps visited the nectaries for a sip of sugar solution as well. And it looks like there definitely is pollen deposition occuring — evidenced by yellow grains adhering to the stigmatic surfaces.
“Ripe” stigmas (ready for pollen depostion) mature later than the pollen sacs on the anthers. They look wet and sticky and their tips protrude far beyond the pollen sacs of the anthers, to avoid getting contaminated with “self” pollen.
Compare the sex structures of this mature flower with those in the new flower where male and female elements are about the same length.
Whether this pollinator action will result in any seed production remains to be seen, but I’ll keep checking.
Back Yard Biology 