Can't help you on the pollen issue. I tried manually pollinating a little last season but I gave up and just let the bees and the flies do it.

I have to wonder about the sweetheart and the no males. I had no fruit set last season on my sweetheart because by the time the few males that there were started opening all the females were past the point of being pollinated. I have heard this from a lot of other people as well. I am thinking the sweetheart probably has a much better fruit set when another variety is available for pollen. Glad to hear you have the mauritius for pollen. I actually planted my mauritius in the same hole as the sweetheart mainly for the reason of being a good pollinator.

Good luck, I hope you get some of each variety to try.

Hey lycheeluva, those are great observations. When Phase001 and I hand pollinated his Sweetheart lychee tree, we noticed very similar traits. The flowers started forming and they tood a couple months to fully open. All primary flowers were female and the males only started showing up very late into flowering.

We also noticed the same pattern of male pollen sacs maturing and changing colors. We didn't visually see pollen transfer but when we were plucking the male pollen sacs off the tree, it shook the male flowers and I could see a cloud of pollen shaking off the tree. The pollen sacs are extremely tiny and very difficult to see. Phase only has on Sweetheart lychee with no other visible lychee's in the neighborhood so his tree was very likely pollinated by its own pollen. We tried to hand pollinate as many females as we could and there were also lots of bees around his yard. If you look back on his post, he had a very decent crop of Sweethearts. Good luck with you pollinating and please keep us updated!

thanks LL,
great detailed observations.

thank you for posting this,
-Ethan

Finally seen small specks of pollen fly into the air when the trees with male flowers have been knocked as I moved around them. extremly gratifying site. I wonder if the pollen is only available at a certain time of day. The sighting happened this morning at 8am. Will check to see if I can see the pollen clouds tonight and then again tomorrow morning.

One thing that seems clear to me, is that having at least 2 and preferably 3 varieties of lychees growing together should result in a far bigger fruit set due to the fact that each tree seems to have its own habit of when the male and female flowers open. For example, if i just had my sweetheart, it would seem likely that all of the fifty female flowers that have opened so far would have gone to waste, unfertilized, as the sweetheart has not opened any male flowers yet.

The hak ip though might be a good tree if you are only going to have one, as it the only one of my three trees so far that has male and female flowers open at the same time.

The sweetheart seems to have by far the highest proportion of females- so far, every single flower on the sweetheart that has opened (about 50) has been female.

still no sign yet of a female on the mauritius- all 30 flowers to open so far on it have been male.

I noticed the same thing last season with the Hak ip. It had a good amount of male and female flowers open during the entire bloom cycle. Mine did not end up holding any fruit, but the tree was very small last year.

so the presence of pollen was not related to the time of the day as I have seen pollen at all times of day. It seems that my mauritius male flowers for some reason have next to no pollen while the Hak ip males have a decent amount. So even though Mauritius is my fave tasting lychee, Hak Ip is my fave as a pollinator, as it has numerous males and females open at the same time and the males have a nice amount of pollen.

So far several of the hak ip and a few of the sweethearts show signs of having been pollinated. Not a single male so far among the sweetheart flowers- great for me as I have male hak ip flowers I can use as a pollinator

the act of pollination (x-rated)

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moved my lychees out of my garage into my living room so they will be more accessible for me to pollinate

sweetheart pannicle- only female flowers

hak ip pannicle- showing male and female flowers

mauritius clusters- only male flowers

Gerry:

Your Hak Ip already has fruit! That thing that looks like a crown is the young fruit. Congrats! You are a potent pollinator after all.

Harry

AWESOME!! I'm so jealous!

Congrats Lycheeluva, your trees look very nice. I can't wait to be able to try Lychee. Seeing your trees it looks like Lychee respond very well to being grown in pots. If I like the fruit, maybe I will give it a try. BTW how is your julie mango adjusting. Did your fairchild set any fruit? My julie is still growing but the panicles have not even come ouit yet. Seems like it is a slower grower all around.
Andrew

my fairchild has a bloom pannicle from each of its three terminal buds. I am optimistic I will get a couple of mangos out of it. my julie mango shrivelled up. i dont know if it was insufficient watering after i potted it up- it didnt look great when i bought it but i took it because it was small enough to bring on the plane. i chopped it a few inches above the graft. will see if it recovers.

Wait, did Harry just point out those fruits to you LL, does that make them his?

great info, glad I have a Hak Ip (wish it would flower)

-Ethan

Red sea- they would be harry's except I was aware of the fruit- I had noted that several hak ip and sweetheart fruit had been pollinated.

by the way- i humbly suggest that the method I am using for pollination is the best one for manual pollination, as it is the most direct and uses the least pollen per act of pollination.

I use a really small pair of tweezers- then with a really bright light (250 watts) focused on the trees, I can see which anthers have pollen and which do not. Often some of the anthers on a flowers will have a pollen while others will be overipe or insufficiently ripe to have pollen. I grasp a single anther containing pollen and gently tug at it, this severs it from the flower- then clasping the anther in the tweezer, i rub it against a female flower.

I believe that each anther only has enough pollen to pollinate one female flower, but by grabbing individual anthers, each male flower can pollinate about 8 female flowers. with practice, you can tell by looking at an anther under bright light whether it contains pollen- it will have an uneven powdery surface that will be quite yellow. When the anthers are underipe, they are white. when they are overipe, they turn khaki and then brown.

when you start doing this, you should very gently touch an anther you think has pollen against your finger- if you do this next to a bright light, you will see a few specs of pollen come off on your finger. It is much more difficult to see the pollen grains after they have come off on the female flower. i have only seen this about 7 times so far.

If I can, after I have rubbed the anther against the female flower, I try to leave the anther lying against the female flower (as a just in case measure). its difficult to do this as the anther is so tiny and ight, it is difficult to get it to come off the tweezers and remain against the flower.

i hope these observations will be helpful to someone.