Bees

[leland]

IMG_6327m2_1.jpg (84.1 KiB) Viewed 4615 times

I was wondering how epies are pollinated in nature. At dawn today the bees were active on E. thomasianum and E. hookeri. The window of opportunity must be short because a couple hours later these flowers were closed.

[tumamoc]

Night bloomers are usually pollinated by moths and bats. You'll see diurnal animals such as bees and hummingbirds taking advantage of the ephemeral blooms in the early morning before the flower closes, but these are not the primary pollinators.

[leland]

Yes, I was hoping to see something more exciting. There are very large black moths here that at first glance look like bats. So far I have not seen them around the epies. Some species open as early as 9:30pm , so the potential is there. Also, there are few to no epies in my immediate area other than in my yard, so if the insect polinators are specialists there may not be many available.

This year several of my Hookeri have grown beautiful fruit, as has my rubrocoronatum, so they are getting pollinated. So far I have not had fruit from my oxypetelum nor my thomasianums. My hylocereus plants are fruiting well and I have harvested many fruits.

[Brunãozinho]

That's cool, last year I have also noticed some bees at a Pilosocereus gounellei flowers in the early morning.

[TheCactusGuy]

my epis are hybrids (flower during the day and arnt white) and they all polinate each other ithink because every year when they flower they all have fruit with seeds

[KittieKAT]

I once saw a bat pollinating one of my cacti i almost crapped my pants!!
Unfortunately we had a bad freeze and it didn't survive long enough to seed properly

[leland]

A few weeks ago my E. thomasianums flowered again. I did not see any pollinators, but I saw a large moth (4 inch wide) on the roof of my house when I came back in from photographing the flowers. I rarely see these moths , so I think it was there because of the flowers. Question is, why was it in the neighborhood?. I don`t know of any other cactus within at least a km.

[KittieKAT]

Maybe it flew all the way there just for you, he heard it from the bees decided to take a peek!