What to do with the Fruit of Mammillaria elegans

[WayneByerly]

late last year my Mammillaria elegans flowered. for quite some time. it bloomed in concentric circles around the entire circumference of the cactus. in just about 8 rows. it bloomed for months!

this is a picture of the cactus from the year before it bloomed

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this is while it is IN bloom. it shows 2 or 3 rows of blooms

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and this shows the fruit of the cactus. and the reason i am writing. i would like to assure viable seeds from these existing fruit. i pulled one out (about 2/3rds of it is recessed, like a pimple) and opened it to see what it's contents looked like. very wet and juicy on the inside with tiny, TINY red seeds. will these seeds eventually turn black like all other cacti seeds i have seen? will they mature? is there anything that i need to do to MAKE them mature or should i just leave them alone until they erupt? how long will it take for them to turn into viable seeds? i built a small greenhouse last year and put most of my cacti/succulents in it, so last year is the (mostly) first experience i have had with my cacti/succulents flowering ... much less with any that are fruiting, and i need to know what to do with them.

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[Vipassana]

I cannot say for sure on that species, but not all cactus seeds are black. They range in color from black to light tan depending on species. Mammillarias in particular are black, redish-brown, or tan in my experience.

For those types of fruits with a gooey core, I typically split them down the middle with a knife and scrap out the guts. I put the wet mixture of seeds and fluids on a coffee filter inside a colander and carefully wash the seeds to remove much of the goo. Be careful though as its very easy to accidently wash the seeds away.

I've see others spread the goo out on a surface and let the moisture evaporate out. Then they scrape off and break up the dried film/seed mixture and sow that. This works too, but I've found having the extra dried, sugary mess on the seed encourages mold growth when you go to sow them.

You could also wait for the whole fruit to dry up, but then I find it very hard to separate the seeds from the husk/pulp.

[esp_imaging]

Unless the flowers were fertilised, it's possible that fruit develop which don't contain fully developed, viable seeds.

[greenknight]

In any case, leave the fruit on the plant until it's completely overripe.

[WayneByerly]

esp_imaging said:
>>"Unless the flowers were fertilised... "

Last year i put my cacti in an inexpensive, simplistic greenhouse... Open on one end with a fan for circulation... Open to allow insects access to flowering cacti (The flowers stayed for MONTHS) ... and the insects did get to them. Although i have NO idea how effective they have been.

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But the fruit has not appeared in near the proliferation as the flowers. Reference the third picture in my original posting on this topic... The Pic of the fruiting cactus.

I had thought that the decreased quantity of fruit (as opposed to the quantity of flowers) would have been a fairly good indicator of the presence of viable seeds. From some of the comments here, it appears as though that idea may not have been valid. That i may actually have zero viable seed despite the number of fruit. That IS possible?

A couple of final comments for this posting:
Someone posted a comment saying that I should leave the fruit on the cactus until they dry up. I think that that is the kind of comment that I was looking for. Advice on what to do with the fruit. So I will leave the fruit on the cactus until they dry.

Those of you who posted here for my benefit may want to keep an eye on this particular topic. Once the fruit have dried up I'll have more seed than I want and will be looking to give them away. And those who have posted in response to my query will be the first in line to receive them (if they want any). Mammillaria elegans.