To my knowledge there are no cultivars of honeyberry/haskap known to be self fertile.
This spring I bought a new (to me) cultivar of honeyberry called “Blue Pagoda” (‘Chitose #11’) and being a young plant it only produced one cluster of flowers. While this was not much to attract the attention of pollinators as it is, I also had this new specimen probably at least a hundred feet away from the next closest honeyberries which were already towards the end of their bloom cycle before the new one bloomed. Even so it appears that every flower within the single cluster set a berry. This seems like too effective of a pollination for it to be purely the result of cross pollination and makes me wonder if this clone (and perhaps others) may have some degree of self fertility.
Has anyone here had any similar observations of honeyberry cultivars which appear to possibly have some degree of self fertility?
Aurora is partially self fertile and we have native honeyberries here in the north. look up Mountain fly honeysuckle. i was told that they could pollinate if flowering times overlap. they are small inconspicuous plants so you likely never noticed them.
I had a similar surprise this year with Tana. I didn’t expect any fruit set since it was so far away from my other bushes. I’m not sure about the ration of flowers to fruit.
I think sometimes when people are selecting new cultivars for high productivity of any species that is typically self infertile, they inadvertently start selecting for genetic variations that allow for some degree of self fertility.
It is not that uncommon. Even if you manage to come up with a variety slighty likely to produce sterile fruit you still would want cross pollination so you could get a decent crop.
Heck having multiple varieties will increase your crop over having just one to cross pollinate. More is just better.
I’m not saying for sure, but my Beast appears to have set a few fruit this year. That said, I did have some Aurora on the other side of the house but I didn’t notice any flowers overlapping. The Aurora were plugs in a box and flowered much earlier than Beast.
Curiously, I took a look at Beast today and it actually has a few more flowers again that I noticed. I don’t know how normal it is for them to have a second round of flowers but it has been a while since I saw any on that bush. If anyone has similar observations, feel free to pm me as I don’t want to derail this thread.
The ‘Aurora’ I got last year has been blooming for a few weeks and the other cultivars next to it are just about to get started. So far it looks like it may be holding fruit despite lack of cross pollination so that’s great!
I have a single aurora cutting that flowered in the greenhouse far earlier than any others outside march (Outside they flower in april, may), no pollinators around then either It seems to have held onto a couple fruits so far but they also seem like they won’t become fully healthy fruits.
This Aurora Honeyberry was dead alone in a sealed up greenhouse this winter while flowering. I removed the leaves to better show the fruit that is still holding besides no hand or wind or insect to pollinate it.
That’s a pretty useful observation. Does it look like most of the flowers set fruit or only some? Also did you see any pollinator activity while blooming or did they seem to set without pollination?
I’ll try to update if they ripen or not, because if they are deformed fruits it won’t matter much. I’d say half of the flowers became fruits, only insects were some white flies and ants, neither anywhere near the honeyberry afaik.
