Male and Female Parts of Flower

[Christa]

[Christa]

Need to know male and female bits so I can assist pollination tonight.   Sounds a bit strange!

[Rob Collings]

It looks like those smaller fine ones are the male parts (they look full of pollen)

[Christa]

Thanks Rob,  hopefully I will end up with a piece of fruit, keep my fingers crossed.    Isn't nature wonderful.

[Andrew Cumberland]

Yep. 

This thread has that kinda "kinky" feeling. 

[Elaine de Saxe]

Funnily enough Botany was considered a genteel occupation for un-married girls in centuries past. When you consider what flowers really are (the sexual organs of plants) perhaps not so genteel after all.

Otoh, time we as a society faced up to the central role sex has in everyday life.

[Andrew Cumberland]

You mean there was a time when people were sensible about life? Hard to believe!

[Elaine de Saxe]

Aren't they exquisite? Do yours have a perfume? Mine don't. An ornamental one growing in another yard was very sweetly scented at night.

Male parts (stamens) are the ring of many pollen-topped threads surrounding the large ornamental top to the pistil (female). I have cut off some stamens and shaken the pollen onto the pistil. Others just shake the flower. See ants too so assume they may be involved in pollination. My first lot of flowers this year pollinated themselves (?) or something happened since they are now growing fruit.

[Christa]

Yes, Elaine, the flowers are exquisite.  No perfume that I can smell, the flower is quite high. This is about the 6th flower on this plant with no luck.   It is the old story about the birds and the bees, but this night time flower may need some help. 

[Elaine de Saxe]

Nothing to lose by giving pollination a whirl. With my plants, jury is out: sometimes I pollinate and don't get a result; sometimes the plants left to themselves produce fruit and sometimes not.

[Lissa]

Haha.

I see the female as the beautiful girl in the middle surrounded by randy fellas - all those stamens standing to attention, looking adoringly at the female part in the middle, just waiting to do their 'thang.

Is this a red fleshed that it needs assistance Christa?

[Christa]

Lissa, I have 3 types and didn't mark them, big gardeners mistake.  

[Lissa]

Ah we all do it. Best intentions and all that. I think I will "remember". What a joke lol.