Here is a list of the plants I used in the common garden for my experiment on pollen interference/competition. I used 20 randomly selected plants in the 96 garden with 12 pollination treatments on each plant. The heads I harvested are also included in this spreadsheet, but here they are again: 39 952 blu and wht heads were harvested on 7/24/09.
The preliminary results seem to show that the only treatments that consistently did not shrivel were:
silver-the control, no pollinations
white-Carduus acanthoides pollen only (thistle)
pink-Coreopsis palmata pollen only
All of the treatments that received echinacea pollen (either am or pm) showed somewhat consistent shriveling…. will it hold up to the stats…. we will see!
the most interesting treatment is…..
purple-Heliopsis helianthoides pollen only- this one had a mix of results, which may be due to differences in the amount of pollen arriving on the styles or some other factor. but it certainly did not show consistent style persistence. hmmmmm…..
Just as a reminder, style shriveling indicates that compatible Echinacea pollen has arrived on a style, and can be a good predictor of seed set. Style persistence indicates that compatible pollen has not landed on a style. In the case of some of my treatments which had both Echinacea pollen and another type of pollen, shriveling may not indicate seed set. This will be tested by dissecting the heads and weighing the seeds later this year.
More results to come soon…
intriguing preliminary results!
Great to see the preliminary results! Very interesting.
This is really neat, Allegra! This information will motivate me to be even more careful when identifying either Heliopsis or Coreopsis pollen from collected specimens. The pollen grains look similar, but it sounds like the presence of each might carry very different implications for Echinacea!