Re: [Aroid-l] Pistia pollination

From: "Marek Argent" <abri1973 at wp.pl> on 2009.01.25 at 17:59:50(18970) Hi, Let me add a few words. Although Pistia blooms frequently, it very rarely gets pollinated and produce seeds. It propagates usually vegetatively through stolons. Has anyone seen Pistia's fruit? Marek HTML +More ----- Original Message ----- From: ju-bo@msn.com To: aroid-l@gizmoworks.com Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 10:57 PM Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] Pistia pollination Dear Christopher and All, Nice story, Christopher! I wish I could learn more about the Brom. crab on the mountains of Trinidad! My good friend Marc, our aroid expert in France just posted a thought, suggesting that Pistia might be pollinated by water! Interesting, and well worth pondering and investigating! BUT---I`d think that the plants of this in Ted`s aquarium (water) would then be able to set seed!!!!!! Ted 1---what think thee?? So---maybe there is a TINY midge or gnat ''out there'' in more tropical climes which ''does the dirty'' for Pistias benifit. Julius From: crogers@ecoanalysts.com To: aroid-l@gizmoworks.com Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2009 08:53:32 -0800 Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] Pistia pollination Hiyer! Dragonflies and damselflies are not pollinators. They are predators. They would not be around your pond unless there was plenty to eat! They are quite voracious, with the aquatic larvae eating the stuff in the pond and the adults eating whatever emerges or flies by. They are death on mosquito larvae, dayflying mosquitos, blackflies, gnats, midges and other flies. I have even watched them pluck spiders from the center of their webs. One goofy thing is that in Jamaica and a few other Caribbean Islands (Julius and I discussed this together long ago) there are freshwater crabs that live in the water collected in bromeliad axils. There are damselflies that only lay their eggs in these little aquariums. They have an elongated abdomen to reach way back in to the axils. If a crab is present, they will grab the damselflies’ abdomen and reel it in. The crab will eat the damselfly, and maybe cut it up into small pieces for its young crabs swimming in the bromeliad tank. This still releases the damselfly’s eggs, which hatch, and the young damsels then are predators on the crab larvae. Go figure. Happy days, Christopher D. Christopher Rogers Senior Invertebrate Ecologist/ Taxonomist ((,///////////=======

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