Absolutely. There’s a word for this process, but I can’t remember it. When new growth comes out it either is or is not designed for creating fruit. I don’t know if 24 hours is enough. I would have expected days to weeks, but since the plant is always creating new structures…it’s possible.
perhaps 24 hours starts the process of flower bud formation mode?
Maybe it takes 2-3 days like this for beans?
I don’t know. It’s all a guess. 
I think I’m seeing buds on one of the teparies, so we’ll see.
1 Like
Nice! It’s easier to test this with bush types, I’m glad your Tepary beans are now forming flower buds.
2 Likes
Fantastic! So it does just take some time but it starts sending the “Go to Flower” signal.
Yes Tepary Bean flowers are really tiny, compared to common bean or runner bean flowers.
It can be a useful way to differentiate species when making crosses.
1 Like
The common bean flowers are pollinating without ever opening so I’m going to have to guess on readiness there. But all three common and both Teparies are now blooming.
1 Like
Fantastic! It might be easier to get Common Bean pollen to cross with Tepary bean ovary than the other way around because Common Beans self-pollinate first.
I think this is why bean breeders cut open common bean flowers before they’ve opened, to make sure they don’t fertilize themselves.
I broke off two bean flowers trying to make the first cross. I think I may have managed it. I need a higher x magnifier and hands that neither shake nor cramp when doing detail work.
I used the white common bean as the female parent both because I had four types of white beans, and because the flowers are larger and easier for my hands to manipulate.
Any bean or descendant that has any color other than white should be a cross.
3 Likes
This suggests that less embryo rescue is needed when the female parent is the common bean, but infertility is high in the crosses.
Looks like the bean is starting to develop.
2 Likes
Interesting… I wonder if they have tried pollinating the same ovary with multiple different pollen sources? It’s interesting since common beans are highly self-pollinating meaning I’d think it would have an effect of stiffing their genetics, making it less receptive to wider species crosses unless it had a lil mix of it’s own species pollen to begin with but perhaps they work very differently. Common Beans & Runner Beans cross naturally where they co-occur in the wild, maybe wild Phaseolus vulgaris is more out-corssing than domesticated P. vulgaris?
So it might help to allow a partial self-pollination, but use timing to give the other pollen the advantage.
I was reading something here a while back, where someone doing inter-species crosses on cucurbits got a higher rate of crosses by using selfed pollen on 1/3 of the stigma, and x pollen on the other 2/3. Essentially tricking the mother plant into accepting the foreign pollen.
The second pollinated flower aborted.
1 Like
OOh! 
What do you mean?
Allow it to self pollinate a little bit & then put pollen from other species onto it?
Yes, if you read it somewhere on these forums, that was probably me 
.
The technique is known as mentor pollination, I learned it from Russian Plant Breeder Ivan Michurin.
It’s very effective at bypassing many hybridization barriers. Squash are very easy for this technique because the flowers are huge, separate male & female types & thus easy to work with.
Phaseolus is a bit more tricky because the flowers are smaller & you have to pull on them to expose the flower organs. Once you get pass that physical difficultly, the same pollen mixing trick should work well.
I’ve also learned inbred species/cultivars struggle with wider crosses, I’ve seen Vigna studies where 1st crossing within their own species made it possible to cross with different species vs when they failed when trying to directly cross between species. The idea being you get the stagnet genetics flowing so they can be more stretchy/plastid.
This doesn’t seem to be a problem for genetically diverse species/landraces, only for very inbred species/heirlooms.
Oh no… Was this the one you mixed it’s own pollen with other species?
My hands shake, and I think I accidentally pulled the flower too hard when trying to pollinate it. Don’t know, though. Each try is better, right? Meh.
I’m starting two bush beans from seed, two that I think might be crosses, so maybe those will have larger flowers.
1 Like
I mean pollinate with the cross when the mother isn’t quite ready to release pollen, then let the flower mature to release its own pollen and hopefully trick it into accepting the foreign pollen. Because of timing, the foreign pollen would have an advantage over the self pollen.
1 Like
Yes! With shaking hands, you may be better at larger flowers, like squash for example.
Beans are very finicky, especially with shakey hands.
I play with Mega Bloks & other tiny things so my hands may be more cut out for this kind of work. I hope to try crossing them eventually when I get a place to grow them.
Nice! Hopefully they result in larger flowers.
Now that’s Smart! I’m taking notes & gonna try that too.
The initial pollination has only one seed developing. 2nd is about an inch long, and the third hasn’t aborted yet but I’m not sure if it took. Another couple days before I can tell for certain.
Plenty of flowers on the common bean, but the tepary bean seems to be aborting the flowers before they open.
I moved them to a window with more light, so hopefully that will solve the problem.
2 Likes
Weird… Is it something to do with the temperature or moisture???
Yea It might just be the light issue actually, good move on bringing them closer to window. That should help.
Two pods developing so far. The last one aborted.
Yesterday’s pollination was two open flowers. We’ll see on that one. Pretty sure it will be pollinated, but the presence of crosses is more questionable.
It looks like most of the tepary flowers are withering as soon as they are self pollinated, which makes sense for a drought tolerant species. I have started watering a little more.
1 Like