how do i hand pollinate pansy flowers. Please Help. Thanks. which is the stigma? where are the stamens? pomme8916
I would think that with everything so close together in the flower, hand pollination would be a matter of inserting a small paintbrush with stiff bristles into the flowers. Then again, it might be far more difficult in practice. Reviewing some of the sites re: heritage plants, it sounds like Viola breeding is an arduous task. The internals of the flower can be seen in this diagram (in the upper right) - the shorter yellowish lengths will be the stamens, while the longer central bottom structure, the pistil, will have the stigmatic surface.
