Pollen Limitation in a Monocarpic Species, Ipomopsis Aggregata

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Abstract
A study was conducted to test whether seed production in the perennial monocarpic plant I. aggregata (Polemoniaceae) was pollen-limited by adding outcross pollen to open stigmas of plants on 3 occasions at weekly intervals. Fruit set and seed set per fruit were compared with a set of adjacent, untreated plants of the same average height and flower number. Experimental pollination doubled the number of flowers producing seed after each occasion and increased the average seed set fruit for the first one. Plants treated with pollen showed correlations between seed production and height and absorted seed production consistent with resource limitation, but untreated, naturally pollinated plants did not.