How to Pollinate Nut Trees
Nut trees are similar to fruit trees in that they produce male and female flowers that must be pollinated to produce fruit. Instead of producing a full fruit, a nut tree produces just the seed, which is the nut itself. Some nut trees can pollinate themselves, but most require pollination from a separate tree. There are a variety of ways to pollinate nut trees, usually depending on the species and cultivar (distinct variety within a species) of tree. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
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Plant a variety of cultivars for cross-pollination. Most nut trees need pollination from a different type of cultivar to produce adequately. Walnut is an exception, as is the Winkler cultivar of hazelnut.
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Allow exposure to pollinator. Let the tree's natural pollinator interact with it to produce natural pollination. Most nut trees are pollinated by the wind. A minority are pollinated by insects. For example, the Brazil nut can only be pollinated by the orchard bee.
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Manually pollinate with catkins. You can cover the female flowers of a nut tree (after first removing the males) with plastic bags and, after about 12 days, rub a male catkin from a different tree over the styles of the female flowers four to five times and replace the bag. A catkin is a cylindrical flower cluster with no petals. The style is the the tube-like structure at the center of the female flower that holds up the stigma and leads to the ovary.
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Manually pollinate with dried pollen. Transfer dried pollen to a glass slide (shaking off most of the pollen so just trace amounts remain) and rub the slide against the style of the female flowers.
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Tips & Warnings
See "Pollination of Fruits and Nuts" in the References section of this article for the requirements of individual nut tree cultivars. Pecans, for example, are divided into two groups of three cultivars each, and one cultivar from each group is necessary for pollination. If you manually pollinate, it is usually necessary to also manually collect pollen from male flowers.
