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I have a female Nep northiana x veitchi that flowered months ago. At the NECPS show in October, Schloaty and I manually pollinated the bottom four flowers with a male N. ventricosa also in flower at the time.

Tonight, I noticed one of the upper flowers (not pollinated by us) was splitting open and sure enough there were some very tiny seeds in there, about 1/4 inch long.

My question is: Do all the flowers form seeds and are they only viable if pollinated.....Or, will the flowers only form seeds if successfully pollinated to begin with. Perhaps some of the pollen also hit the upper flowers?

Thanks.

WildBill

PS: Most of the seeds are spoken for. Any left over will go to the ICPS Seedbank.
 
I have found that pollinated flowers will only produce mature seed. Mature seed can be identified by the long threadlike ends and a small little ball or bump in the center of it. Immature seed or unviable seed will be found to be much smaller and be straight with no embyro bump or ball in the center. Mature seed measures on average about 1 inch long. Immature seed will be around 1/2 inch and less in length. Also the size of the ovary will determine whether it contains mature seed or not, if it swells to be abour 1 inch long, then crack it open, if its smaller than 3/4inch then usually I do not bother and compost it.
 
The seeds have the bump in the middle, but are very short: 1/2 inch or less.

Would the plant size affect the seed size? It was a young plant to begin with, in fact, a cutting that sent up the flower after a month or so.
 
Age would definetly be a determining factor in ovary size/seed size. As long as they have an embryo ,Bill, try them.
 
Hi,
those which were not pollinated by you most likely wont grow, the difference should be easily noticeable.
I happened to have a pic from last time:
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b209/Lam_wn/799c68c4.jpg
the difference is obvious
ALL the 'fruits' will split to give 'seed' , but like what nepenthes gracilis said, ONLY the 'long' ones will germinate, (those which were successfully pollinated)
bump or what I dont know, but good seed have the embryo bump.
 
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