Butterflymomok and misssherry, I am happy to see that you all know the value of Larry's expertise, but I am definitely not surprised. I just stumbled into the forum as a newbie, and it will take a while to examine and read through old threads. I will try to catch up and contribute as I may to the discussions. Fortunately, my specialization is different than Larry's in that I work with noctuid moths primarily. I do a great deal of rearing and life history work. I stress the importance of valuing biodiversity because so much remains to be discovered, even right here in the US. The group referred to in my previous post has yielded 11 new species and one new genus and species in California alone. And we are talking about colorful day-flying moths that have simply been overlooked. I first found one new species in the MEDIAN STRIP of I-5! I was in a net swinging frenzy until the Highway Patrol intervened. There are wonderful things to be discovered everywhere: here at home as well as in far flung jungles. As, it turns out, Larry and I passed like ships in the night in one of those far away jungles over a decade ago. I didn't know that, of course, when I joined in the forum, but I couldn't shake the notion that I should know who Larry was. I was trying to place who he might be and used the the language of Papua New Guinea, tok pisin, to test the hypothesis and to offer my bona fides to Larry. The Larry I was thinking of would be one of the few people on earth to understand the references I wrote in that language. I am so happy to have rediscovered him! Misssherry, if you look at our tok pisin entries you will see the word "wantok", which means "friend". Tok pisin is a true pidgin language. "Wantok" (friend) comes from "one talk", meaning sharing one form of talk or thought, a bond. On this forum, we are all talking of the same thing; we share a bond and a love for our natural world. We, therefore exhibit "one talk". We are, therefore, all wantoks. Terry PS to Larry: Mi save tru yu wan bel...

My plants started out with a few males, then a mix of male and female--I got several zukes by hand pollinating--but I'm only getting female flowers now. There are no fruit on the plants now (I've heard that can alter flowering). This happened last year, too, and I can't find out why.

Veronica, I'm a gardening newbie as well, but here is what I've learned recently. The male flowers are on stems, like regular flowers. The females are on the end of the fruit itself. I didn't know if I would be able to tell the difference until I found the first female yesterday. Here's a photo. You can definitely see the beginnings of a zucchini.

I don't think so - but you could post it to youtube and post the link here.