When you think of spring flowers on trees I would expect things come to mind like Dogwood, Redbud, or the ever so popular Bradford Pear. But pretty much every tree flowers in one way or another… it has to in order to perpetuate it’s species. It’s just that not all of them do it in such a showy fashion.

Take for example Maples. No one ever associates Maples with flowers. Here is a Norway Maple in my front yard. At a glance it appears that the tree is simply pushing out this year’s set of leaves. Closer inspection reveals that it’s actually the maple’s bouquet of flowers, it’s offering to would-be pollinators. I have no idea what those pollinators are, but I’m sure it’s some kind of insect.

And here we have a Norway Spruce. Apparently someone of Norwegian descent must have lived here decades ago and attempted to recreate their homeland. I assume these are the starts of flowers, but I could be wrong. Spruces and Firs often have red, purple or bluish colored flowers and I believe most conifers tend to rely solely on the wind for pollination as they produce exorbitant amounts of pollen.

Ok class today we are going to study plant reproduction, particularly in plants that are incapable of reproducing the good old fashioned way.

In this case it’s my lemon tree. For plants to fruit they have to have their flowers pollenated. Which I think is kind of weird because they produce the pollen and the pollen receptacle…but have no way to move their pollen from point A to B. This is normally where bees or some other kind of insect come into play. But this lemon is kept indoors and thankfully there isn’t a hive of bees in my closet. Luckily, the flowers smell so good they attract me instead, and I get the job done. I doubt the plant cares exactly how it happens, just as long as it does.

There really isn’t much to it… I take a q-tip and collect pollen from the stamen (the little tentacle things in a flower) and then brush it all over the pistil (the stem in the middle of the flower that is covered in some kind of “pollen glue”). I am not sure why I know what the parts of a flower are called.

I usually collect pollen from a variety of flowers and mix and mingle it all together and rub the pollen potpourri on the flowers because I am not sure if the pollen will work in the same flower or if it needs pollen from a different flower.

Anyways… so that’s really all there is to making lemon babies. It’s actually kind of neat when you think about how the whole process works in nature.