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kmekaru_gw

How to cross pollinate dragon fruit?

kmekaru
17 years ago

HI,

My friend has a dragon fruit plant in their backyard and it has flowered a few times, but they have no luck in getting fruit. Does the dragon fruit plant have separate male and female flowers? Or are both structures on the same flower?

I've also started to grow dragon fruit, so this information would be useful to me too.

How are most of you getting your fruit?

Thanks.

Comments (6)

  • dghays
    17 years ago

    The varieties I have are self pollinating. Those tons of yellow things popping up in the flower in a circle are the male parts if I have it right. The single thing in the middle is the female part. So take a paint brush and swish it thru those male parts, and brush it into the female part. To cross pollinate, simply grab the stuff from a different flower. You could try to pollinate the same flower. If the plant is real small, it might not have enough size to hold a fruit.

    Gary

  • Eggo
    17 years ago

    Kmekaru, like Gary mentions it is quite easy to pollinate the dragonfruit although I've never done it the blooms are so large it should be no problem. You would want to do the pollination in the evening when the flowers begin to open. From what I understand even different flowers from the same cultivar will not pollinate each other, you will require flower from a different cultivar to get it to produce fruits. It may be a bit difficult for your friend if all he/she grows is that one cultivar. Here's a picture of the open flower, get pollen from the anthers and brush it against the stigma.


    You must also know that some of the first Hylocerus sp. introduced here were grown mostly only for flowers, don't self pollinate and no fruit selection were done on them, most are of poor tastes. If someone has a large clump that rarely produced fruit for them, these were probably it.
    Some believe that the first self pollinating Hylocereus was a mutation in the Vietnames cultivars that were later introduced here to breed for self fertile varieties and taste.

  • powertelconstruction_yahoo_com
    12 years ago

    greetings of peace!
    WE had a dragon fruit in our backyard garden & keeps on flowering but up to this time almost 4 years now we have'nt experience seeing it bearing fruit.We already had several cuttings for transplanting in our farm but was discourage for we had no idea on manually pollinating dragon fruit.thanx & God bless
    Jess

  • hapu47_yahoo_com
    12 years ago

    In Sri Lanka, Dragon Fruit plantations in commercial scale started recently.My son received two 12 inch long cuttings from a friend about 15 years back and he just kept them vertically against a Mango tree in our garden.Years went by and we noticed a large growth of a cacti which flowered during the months of May to late October but without any fruits.By this time my son was in Australia and when asked he told me that it was a dragon fruit cutting he placed against the mango tree. Cross pollination was not possible as it was high on the tree.However, later I went into commercial growing of dragon fruit and planted cuttings from the mango tree and cross pollinated successfully.

  • aliimobilelube_yahoo_com
    12 years ago

    How can you tell what color plant you have?

  • AF LAW
    3 years ago

    Some varieties self pollinate, implying that you can use the pollen from a flower on another one of the same variety or from other varieties. Some other varieties need cross pollination, implying that you need the pollen of another variety (nothing about male or female).


    Normally if you have many varieties, they will flower on the same night, hence you can cross pollinate. Sometimes flowers of different varieties does not open on the same night......... You can store some dry pollen in a glass jar in a refrigerator for a maximum of 3 days.

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