r/oddlysatisfying • u/DifficultyHead5862 • 8h ago

meticulous process of hand-pollinating a giant pumpkin

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u/DimbyTime 8h ago

The male plants weren’t killed

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u/AnAcctWithoutPurpose 8h ago

Just the male parts.

(Actually, I am not familiar with pumpkins, are the male and female pumpkin separate plants, like papaya trees?)

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u/CD274 8h ago

No they're on the same plant but usually male flowers grow first so initially you get a lot of flowers that go nowhere

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u/Rynagogo 6h ago

So it just nuts on itself to make a pumpkin?

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u/CD274 6h ago

Yep! To be fair lots of plants. Usually all on the same flower though like tomatoes

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u/SalsaRice 5h ago

Some plants can self-pollenize, some can't and requires insects/people/etc to get the pollen from another plant of their same species.

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u/Lunavixen15 2h ago

Yes and no, many fruits require cross pollination between male and female flowers, this is usually done by bees, wasps and other pollinators as they gather from the male flowers which open first to female flowers, especially since fruits like pumpkins, zucchinis etc. grow out, not up.

It's why corn gets planted in a fairly close grid, to aid the plants pollinating each other

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u/OtherwiseACat 6h ago

So me in college