The Kiwi is an odd plant. I have several on my property and we only saw actual Kiwi fruit the first year we moved in. Cue to four years later and I see these things on the branches for the first time. Things.
I hope they’re the start of some actual Kiwi fruit, but I can’t find anything on the net about what the fruits start out as or what the hell these things are.
I turn to the Dope as usual to help me out. Do Not Fail Me!
Yes, they look like little kiwi fruit to me. You realize that fruit (all fruit, not just kiwi fruit) start out as flowers, right?
They look like unopenned flower buds to me.
Yes but the flowers (another photo I didn’t post) don’t look like that. And I thought that the small fruits would have hairs on them, these don’t.
In fact I’ll post the flower pic to the same blog, It’ll be the top photo now.
The flowers are shaped like little bells with green outside leaves and white interior petals. Completely different than the redish ball type structure.
BTW, the photos are of two different plants adjacent to one another, you can see the red stems in the ‘fruit’ photos and the green stems on the other plant with the flowers. Male, female?
This could be, then the flowers from the reddish plant would have to be pollinated with the flowers of the greenish plant? Methinks.
Which plant then fruits? Or do they both? I believe the greenish plant was the one that had the fruit four years ago.
Another thing I learnt on the internets. Kiwi is supposed to fruit in the late summer, early fall - so this would be a little early for fruit to appear.
Mine bloomed a few weeks ago. They’ll be ripe in September/October in Maryland. I’d guess being so far north, the OP’s would bloom a bit later.
Hardy kiwis, and to be alive way up there, they must be, have smooth, hairless fruit.
Kiwis are dioecious; the male and female flowers are on different plants. Except for Issai, which bears both male and female flowers on the same plant.
Fruit, flowers, same difference. 
It’s hard to tell from the pictures if those are male or female flowers. The flower buds (I agree with Bewildebeest now) because they haven’t opened yet, the flowers because the resolution is too low. Could you post an extreme closeup of a single flower, like this Wikipedia image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kiwi-Flower%2C_male.jpg
Sure, I’ll take some more photos tonite and get them up ASAP.
I agree they look like unopened flower buds. If the photos are recent, most assuredly, as kiwis flower in mid-spring in warmer climates, later in your location.
The calyx( reddish area between the stem and flowering structure is very tight, and the petals are the white part, tightly closed. If it were developing fruit, the petals would be gone, not as white as in your photo. I’d suppose that kiwi would flower in your area about midsummer.
Here’s a nice little botany lesson on the development of fruit. Which is, of course, a successfuly fertilized swollen plant ovary, often aided and abetted by insects, who are lured to the sexual parts of the plants by a dazzling array of color, intoxicating scent, delicious nectar, and nutricious plant sperm. If all goes well in the day-to-day Bacchanal, the pollen reaches the ovary and it, satisfied by the gush of attention, forms it’s next generation of being,seeds, surrounded by enticingly tasty sugar-filled juiciness, in hopes that some more mobile creature will eat the swollen ovary and then excrete the seeds, complete with ready made fertilizer, onto the dirt to make more plants.
Such a simple, wonderful system, yet amazing. From your photos, looks like your kiwis are very healthy. Hope you have a bumper crop, they are tasty!
Ok, new photos all!
The buds have blossomed, they WERE flowers, not fruit.
Now we need to know what to do with these guys…should I cross pollinate by hand?? Or let nature take its course?Link to same blog.
Yep, smaller, more insignificant flowers are male, bigger flowers female. From what I’ve read, not growing kiwis meself, a good crop can depend on enough bees to pollinate them. If you don’t have a lot of bees active, you can do the “paintbrush” technique, and take the pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers. In Kiwi, they are separate plants.
Ah, you’ve got females there. At the base of those white filaments you’ll see an enlarged yellow-greenish structure. This is the ovary, which will eventually form the fruit if you can get the flowers pollinated. The newer flowers haven’t developed fully enough for me to tell, but they’re probably male.
As a New Zealander, plese let me point out that you are talking about a KIWIFRUIT, ** I** ama kiwi, and find it inordinatley annoying every time I hear the fruit called a “KIWI”.
Also - to any other New Zealander’s here, do you find this annoying?
Finally, if you are too lazy to call the damn thing a Kiwifruit, try “Chinese Gooseberry” - which is what it was called before some brillant marketeer renamed it. Also, as a point of mindless trivia, most “Kiwifruit” are now grown in China.
adopted,
<Voice of Steve Martin>
Well ExcuuuUUUUUSE MEEEEEE
</Steve Martin>
You are correct, the proper name is Kiwifruit. Is Kiwifruit also a derogatory name for a homosexual living in New Zealand?
The second picture on your page is a mulberry. While you can eat a few of them before the diarrhea hits, it’s best to avoid them. They leave a horrific stain under themselves, which typically get tracked all over your carpets. Worst, birds love them and crap indellible purple crap all over your laundry, car, front walk, the shirt you’re wearing, etc. :rolleyes: Get rid of it.
Can’t tell with the first one. Might be some type of wild cherry.
I can’t get rid of it. The Kiwifruit is wrapped all around the damned thing. I suspect the original installer of the Kiwi plants had intended to use the Mulberry plant to support the Kiwi. It seems to work, though I have to trim the shit out of the Mulberry bush because it grows like friggin bamboo. I have counted five Kiwi plants in the yard and each was planted with some sort of additional folliage for support.
The first photo on that page is of the same type of bush as the mulberry; grows fast, impossible to kill (I cut it off at the ground and it came back with a vengeance) very hardy, weedlike sprouts, etc. There is a highly upopular plant that the DNR even doesn’t like, I can’t think of the name otherwise I could google it, but I’ve heard that it can take over a forest and choke out other plants. This might be that plant.
Any guesses? (see the top photo in the link)
No! It may seem odd to everyone else in the world but there are two Kiwi’s; The birds and NZers.
Kiwifruit were named by a NZer, they were called kiwifruit ie; a fruit from New Zealand. They were NEVER marketed as Kiwi, infact kiwifruit from New Zealand are now marketed as Zespry because New Zealand was idiotic and sold the plants all over the world.
Kiwi are birds or people NEVER the fruit.
So, calm kiwi, should this:
Be this?:
“I suspect the original installer of the kiwifruit plants had intended to use the Mulberry plant to support the Kiwifruit…”
(we’re fighting ignorance here, after all.)
