Pollinators and pollination

Plant flowers, and the pollinators will come. I wish I had more time to watch them. I mentioned in a previous post that I had seen a silver spotted skipper for the first time. We have lots of them. I got a picture (well, lots of pictures, but autofocus often let me down) of one on the obedient plant in the wetland restoration.

Silver-spotted skipper

Also on the obedient plant, I saw a painted lady

Painted lady

And what I think is some kind of copper, but it is impossible to identify when it is all folded up with its head deep in the floral tube. Who knew there were so many?

Quite possibly some kind of copper

My life will be complete if I ever see a hummingbird at my cardinal flowers. We took a giant step away from that goal because the wet spring allowed reed canary grass to proliferate to such and extent that I could only find three cardinal flowers, and one of them was across the firebreak from the restoration area. It’s good to know that they are able to colonize other areas. If next spring is not so wet, I hope to mount an aggressive attack on the reed canary grass (or RCG, as it is called in restoration circles).

Cardinal flower--my favorite. So red!

I have learned some things about corn pollination this year. We did not cover the seeds with row cover, and many of the seeds suffered predation. Terry replanted. This resulted in a sparse crop that bloomed at disparate times. Early in my corn growing experience, I tried growing four rows of corn, which was not enough. I ended up with cobs that only had a few large, round kernels. I was so worried about pollen limitation on this year’s crop that I hand pollinated the first row as the silks and tassels appeared. Those ears were great. I went on vacation; one thing led to another, and I never got around to pollinating the rest of the rows. It turned out that they did pretty well on their own. 

The corn that was left after two weeks of eating it nearly every day

Here’s the first thing you need to know about corn pollination: ever kernel is attached to a silk. The pollen grain has to travel all the way down the silk to fertilize each kernel. If you look closely, you can see a “silk scar” on the kernel where the silk attached. The “cob scar” is on the other side, where the kernel attaches to the cob.

I always knew that the corn at the tip of the cob was less developed than at the base. This year for the first time, I realized it is because pollination goes from bottom to top. The silks start out short and continue to grow for many days. My guess is that the earliest silks are attached to the bottom kernels. If there’s lots of pollen around, you get nice, even rows of uniformly-sized kernels (left in the picture below).

Left: good pollination throughout; middle: uneven rows show limited pollen, no pollination at the tip; right: good pollination at the bottom, sparse pollination toward the top.

If pollen is limited, the pollinated kernels grow over the unpollinated kernels, as can be seen in the irregular rows at the bottom of the cob in the middle. On this cob and many others, the pollen just ran out after a certain time; all of the kernels at the top are unpollinated.

The cob at the right shows a few round kernels that got pollinated among a lot of duds before the pollen became completely unavailable for the last kernels.  The base is well-pollinated as with the other cobs.

More than you wanted to know? Perhaps, but I can’t help myself. I don’t have students to torment any more.

As long as we’re talking corn, here’s a picture of one of my favorite summer suppers. You may note that the BLT does not have any L. The BLT has an inherent seasonal disconnect, at least in my world. The L is long gone before the Ts ripen. Bacon is forever! Also On the side is a bowl of cucumbers in sour cream. Heaven.

Farm to table supper: bacon and tomato sandwich, corn on the cob, cucumbers in sour cream