Follies and learnings from the garden!

The snake gourd - male flower 

When I first spotted the beautiful, white star-fish shaped flowers on my snake gourd plant, I was super thrilled! And having read about hand pollination, I was all ready and eager to try it out, hoping to help the plant in its natural process and dreaming of nice, long green snake gourds hanging down the plant.  Only at that time, I didn't know there was a difference between bisexual and uni sexual flowers.  When I saw two of them, I assumed they were bisexual flowers (like the chilli plant) and that they just needed some help. So, I picked up one of the flowers and tried transferring the pollen to the other flower (but both happened to be male flowers and I clearly didn't know about it!)  Having done my bit, I waited eagerly and looked at the plant every morning hoping to see the vegetable growing.  After 3 days, the flower dried up and fell off the plant, leaving me utterly clueless, wondering what had gone wrong.  Only much later, after I read up some information on gourds, I realised my folly -I had tried pollinating one male flower with another - no wonder things didn't work!

Some plants like the chilli,  produce bisexual flowers -that is, both the male and female parts are present in the same flower.   Thus pollination is not hard here - with a slight shake of the stem, the pollen gets released.

A better view of the gourd!

Some plants, like the ridge or snake gourds, produce uni sexual flowers; that is, separate male flowers and separate female ones.  Here again, the plant always produces male flowers first.  They need the help of the bees or butterflies for pollination to occur.  Or in some cases, human intervention is required in the form of hand pollination, where pollen from the male flower is transferred to the female flower by using a brush or placing the male flower over the female.

The female flower - with a gourd like structure at the base

I also learnt to identify the male and female flowers.  Male flowers have only long stalks but female flowers have a small-sized gourd at the base of their stalk which later grow into the actual vegetable.

Female flower of ridge gourd

Finally, I did help my snake gourd plant after the female flowers appeared on the plant.   Now, I am eagerly waiting for the gourd to grow to its full size.  And despite all the stumbling and mistakes made, I find that the entire process is a truly magical experience!