On 01/02/2015 11:14, Michael Bell wrote:
I have to trap airborme pollen for a project. I have a battery-
powered blower (quite a high volume) but how should I trap the pollen
and apply it to the stamen?

One possibility to use a Dyson vacuum cleaner "root cyclone". It
"ought" to work for pollen of 20 - 25 microns diameter.

Another possibility is to trap the pollen NOT on a "HEPA" filter,
which is far too fine, but on one of the other filters which go with
Dysons - there is a confusing variety of them and some of them are
"washable" And wash the pollen off the filter using water with *very
little Fairy liquid* and put it onto the stamens.

Somehow, I twitch at that! But is this rational? Pollen can't be
killed by water. Surely, it will be OK?

Is there any knowledge of these things?

Michael Bell

Try googling artificial pollination Alnus. What I find is

http://link.springer.com/article/10....:1003859030320

which is paywalled, but which I would expect would have something about
how the pollination was performed in a methods section.

There is apparently a copy available on ResearchGate, but you may need
to have an affiliation with an academic institution to sign up.

Elsewhere I find "Multiple important inter-specific hybrid taxa have
been/are being created by controlled pollination under greenhouse
conditions using the grafted scion approach". I interpret this as
grafting seed parent branches onto pollen parent trees and growing them
in enclosed conditions so that other pollen is excluded. (Alnus
glutinosa = and perhaps other alders - is self-incompatible.)

The book at


https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...0alder&f=false

gives some potentially useful references.