Are Bacuris dioecious ? I have a huge tall bacuri plant in my garden which every year gives pink-red flowers but no fruits . Any info on this regard would be appreciated
Yes dioecioous.
Geez, Oscar, I hope you are mistaken on that one. I've downloaded over a dozen articles on bacuri & none say it is dioecious. One, from the fao, says the flowers are bisexual and another from a Brazilian source, says the flowers are "hermaphrophytic" (presumably a typo for hermaphroditic). If indeed dioecious & I am lucky enough to get one to germinate, hopefully you will have some scions in the future to graft the other sex onto my tree.
By the way, this is not meant to question you, Oscar -- just that it is very hard to get a straight story on a lot of these more obscure fruits. On line sources are often inaccurate.
John
Yes, rusty memory on my part. Here is an excerpt from the book Quality and Potential Use of Bakuri
, translated from portuguese:
The flowers are hermaphroditic and androgynous, actinomorphic, polistêmones,
large (about 7 cm long and 3 cm in diameter) and solitary
terminals, located in the branches and terminals, covering the entire crown with
a beautiful ornamental effect (Clement and Venturieri, 1990; Mourão and Beltrati,
1995a, 1995b).
These flowers are composed of 4 sepals and 4 to 6 petals in pink
beginning and then red, and very showy, with numerous stamens,
meeting on 5 bundles (phalanges) opposite the petals. These characteristics
flowers are present in pink initially, rising to the color
red after more typical format of the crown in the shape of inverted cone,
create the place where these plants a color to be seen and
appreciated (Manica, 2000).
According Villachica et al. (1996), the state of Pará, the Bacurizeiro
flowers, usually between June and July, continuing the fallen leaves.
The ripe fruit falls from December to May the following year, with more
production from February to March.