Flower power

Another side project that I have been working on is looking at the pollination syndrome of Brunsvigia orientalis. Monica from Offshore Adventures has been running this project, supervised in part by Mark and I have been assisting with a lot of the fieldwork. Besides locating as many populations as possible and counting the number of flowers in each (sometimes ranging up to and over 1000 plants!) we have been bagging flowers and measuring nectar volume and concentration. We have also been doing pollinator observations, and it seems that sunbirds are the primary pollinators. We are hoping to publish the data we have collected, which would be awesome!

Amethyst Sunbird on a Brunsvigia plant.

Bagged flowers.

One of the fields we were working in, and our faithful fieldwork companion.

Full anther contact on a Greater Double-collared Sunbirds head.