Echinocereus reichenbachii baileyi DJF1327 MG250.603    8/7/21
This picture is two weeks after the preceding picture. Note the fruit scar left behind when the ripe fruit fell off. Actually, the fruit was overripe. When I picked it up, there was nothing inside the fruit. That is, the ants had removed all the pulp and seeds without me noticing. I put the plant in the greenhouse to ward off ants. They're also in my greenhouse, but I can control (=kill) them better there. I got a couple of hundred seeds from the fruit that wasn't harvested by ants. The new flower buds both opened and I used any pollen on hand to pollinate them The illustrated flower did yield seeds; the other bud was not successfully pollinated when it bloomed. I want seeds from this plant so that I can make more plants and raise them to flowering. I'm going to try to stabilize the late flowering in the genome by breeding the offspring back into the parent and parent into the offspring. This will take about 3 years, maybe more. A late-summer flowering cold hardy Echinocereus would be a good thing to have available.   (066/112)   

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