Scaled image p40.webp

Peniocereus greggii SNL1 fruit     10/13/19
I'm still bragging. I was so lucky to have had two flowers on different plants open at the same time. (They open at night and close by about noon the next day, not to ever open again.) I did the paintbrush sex thing, and the presence of these bright red fruit says that the two plants were sexually compatible. I'll harvest the seeds in a few weeks. (In habitat, the plants flower about mid-June and the fruit is ripe about two months later. It all takes much longer at my 6400 feet (2000 m) altitude in Northern New Mexico.) I want to make sure the fruit are absolutely ripe. Of course, I care about the seeds, not the fruit. I've planted 20 year old seeds of this species and gotten good germination, but fresher seed always makes the grower (me!) more confident of a good germination outcome. This might be about the 5th generation of the seeds I originally harvested (stole) in 1969 in Tucson. The parent plant is, of course, what the fruit are attached to. The left lower corner has some stems of Peniocereus diguetti/striatus showing. The other stems are Echinocereus poselgeri. You can't see them, but there are a couple of buds developing among the tangle. The main flush of this species, and it is huge, occurs in late April to early May. There are a few random stragglers all summer, and, apparently, into the fall.   (40/40)   

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