North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Matt Demmon <mdemmon@gmail.com>]

This would make sense to me, because kiwi is in it's own family, and none of
the members of this family are native to the U.S. So the flowers may be
quite different than what the native bees are used to. They may not
recognize it as food until they try. And some may never like it. But I would
imagine generalist pollinators may get the hang of it eventually.

Other plants that aren't native to this continent used for fruit have close
relatives that are native here, or may just have more attractive flowers.
Honeyberry, goumi, sea buckthorn, pear, peach, apricot, etc all have close
relatives.

It would interesting if anyone knows what pollinates Actindia in it's native
habitat.

-matt
z5 se MI

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 10:52 PM, John S <swim_at_svc@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Alan,
>
> I had a conversation with a local berry grower that also does kiwis a
> couple of years back.  He indicated it can take years for the local
> pollinators to discover and get used to kiwi.  He didn't have a reason, just
> said that it took them years after flowering before their vines started to
> get good production and that it was an issue with pollinators not hitting
> the kiwi.
>
> Perhaps others here can help.  Kiwi is new to the area, only been seeing it
> grown in the last 10 years or so.
>
> My Issai flowered a lot this year after skipping two years, so I'm hoping
> for a small crop this year.
>
> John
>
>
>
> --- On Wed, 6/8/11, Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
> Subject: [NAFEX] Bees Don't Like my Kiwis
> To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Wednesday, June 8, 2011, 5:08 PM
>
> So much in the kiwi literature expounds on the necessity of nearby male
> plants for reliable cropping, but I can't help but wonder if this isn't a
> misunderstanding of the pollination issues with this fruit.
>
>
> I have plenty of male argutas in the mix but watching closely the last
> couple of years I notice that my various native pollinators are not very
> interested in cold hardy kiwis (actinidia arguta).
>
>
> The funny thing is that it's supposed to be pears that the buzzers avoid
> but
> those blossoms are well tended in my orchard and others I manage.
>
>
> I don't know if it's because there are more attractive flowers during
> kiwis
> bloom time or what- certainly the multi-flora roses are drawing huge crowds
> as did the blackberry blossoms. I can't really eliminate the competition to
> find out (although I'm at constant warfare with the multiflora)  but almost
> everything else is getting some action.  The kiwis seem to be the
> wallflowers that no one wants to dance with.
>
>
> Of course, my heroic carpenter bees make a little effort, maybe in the
> spirit of keeping the plain girl at the dance from being depressed, but I
> suspect this will be another year of very light fruit set. It has been many
> years since there's been a bumper crop.
>
>
> I can prune the plants for tremendous floral display (and they are pretty
> and very aromatic flowers, especially on the Rosanna that hangs over the
> entrance of my house) and I can make the flowers easy to find, by pruning
> away interfering shoots, but I can't make the bees come.   The good news is
> that I’m not crazy about kiwis anyway and their main function is to hide
> things on my property I don’t want to see.
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