My preferred pollinating method is using tweezers. I either cut or gently pull out some anthers and rub them all over the stigma lobes with the tweezers. Easy and fast to clean between uses. I do use a small nylon bristle paintbrush for the smaller flowers, but it seems the pollen has difficulty sticking to the bristles. Could just be my eyes aren't seeing the pollen or the maybe the quality of paintbrush is bad. I have tried natural bristle brushes but those seem to perform worse. For example, I first used the brush on the Bulbine flowers (stigma lobes too tiny to use tweezers), but those did not form fruits. Instead, I gently rubbed the flowers face to face and that resulted in a viable fruit nearly every time. I wash the brush with my fingers using warm water and dish soap. In the summer it'll dry within an hour (likely minutes).jerrytheplater wrote: ↑Mon Jan 30, 2023 12:58 pm Eric, question on pollinating: I am assuming you are using a paintbrush to transfer pollen-correct?
If a brush: do you clean it between uses to prevent unintentional hybrids? How do you clean it? How long does it take to dry?
What I haven't been controlling for is insects. Bees love Astrophytum and Parodia flowers. Mammillaria not so much - or at least I haven't observed them or other insects visiting those (hummingbirds do like my M. senilis plant though). From the limited experiments I've done, my flowering size Mammillaria don't seem to hybridize, so I'm not too concerned about unintended hybridization for now. For Astrophytum (which hybridize easily) I only assume I have a pure species cross when only that species is in flower, but in my records I note that such seeds were obtained from open pollination since bees and other insects have access to the flowers. None of my immediate neighbors grow cacti, but bees can get around and cacti are a popular landscape plant around here so you never know.