Sweetheart Lychee Blooming- December 2009

What an exciting year this is. The lychee bloom spikes started mid November. There are a lot of bloom spikes for my 6 ft tall sweetheart lychee! It was disappointing at first since there were only female flowers and no male flower at all. Female flowers bloomed on December 14 and not until December 27 where I got some male flowers. I think there are only 10% of male flowers. It's not easy to pollinate these flowers. A brush will not work since there are some nectar around the flowers causing the brush to get very sticky. So what I did was to collect some male flowers with my tweezer and then use the tweezer to clip the male flowers and brush it on the fresh female flowers. Cross my fingers and hope I will get some fruits. I will continue to do this pollination for the next few days until all my flowers are gone.

December 1. Still just bloom spikes.

12-14. Some female bloomed.

12-18. Still just female flowers.

12-21. More female flowers

12-15. More female flowers

12-25. The bloomed female ovaries are larger.







12-27. Finally some male flowers!!!

Here are a lot of female flowers without pollination since there was no male flower. Somehow the ovaries still swell up. We will see if these will fall off later or not.







Me trying to pollinate with my tweezer...lol