Land of the blue pollen

As the sky is blue, pollen is yellow. Except when they aren't. 

Clouds, dust and the setting and rising of the sun turn the sky grey, red, or even yellow. For flowers, it's a rather rarer occurrence for pollen to not be yellow. Sometimes it is red, brown or green, and occasionally even the (usual) colour of the sky, blue.

Blue pollen is found in a few unrelated species, such as borage and various species of geranium, willowherb (Epilobium) and squill (Scilla). The blue-pollened flowers I'm most familiar with are the New Zealand species of Fuchsia. This is a genus we mostly associate with the Americas, where there are 100 or so species, but three species are found only in New Zealand, and all have blue pollen.

Six years ago, I posted a story about one of these New Zealand species, the world's tallest fuchsia, tree fuschia or kōtukutuku (Fuchsia excorticata). This is a widespread species on all three main islands. There is also a thick stemmed climber, Fuchsia perscandens (and a hybrid between these two species, Fuchsia ×colensoi), distributed across the North and South Islands.

The third species, creeping fuchsia or tōtara (Fuchsia procumbens), is a more delicate plant restricted to the North Island. We have it growing in a hanging pot and not only did it survive its first Bowral winter, it is now in flower!

In my 2000 post, I included one picture of a creeping fuchsia flower taken in a botanic garden in New Zealand. Those flowers were fading, with rather pale blue pollen. Here you can see the intensity of the colour in newly opened flowers.

You might also notice that the flowers have no petals or female parts, only sepals and stamens. It's clear from the unopened bud that the bent back flaps are the outer (typically green) sepal layer rather than petals, and that's true of all flowers of this species. 

The absence of female parts is true of only some flowers - obviously, or the species would be in more peril that it is currently (it's uncommon and at some risk across the country). In nature, I gather, there are male, female and bisexual flowers. So far, all our flowers have been male.

As I mentioned last time, blue pollen from fuchsias ends up on the faces of the tui and other pollinating birds, as well as the lips of Māori. As to why the pollen is blue, bees have a preference for bluish colours and it seems more likely the tiny flower of the creeping fuchsia is pollinated by small insects rather than tui. Certainly not by the 3-millimetre-long 'inch worm' you can see in some pictures! 

Which begs the question: why is pollen mostly yellow? Well, for different reasons to why the sky is blue and apparently not because yellow attracts a certain kind of pollinator. The best hunch seems to be that the pigment giving pollen its yellow sheen - a flavonoid - protects the sensitive cargo within from the mutating effects of ultraviolet light. Generally, then, the rest of the flower does the heavy lifting on colouring up to attract pollinators.

Notes: 

1. All photographs were taken yesterday and are from the creeping fuchsia in our hanging basket.

2. The phenomenon of blue pollen is only mentioned in passing but look out for The Flower Unfurled to be published in February 2027 for other tantalising stories about flowers.

3. There is a fourth species of Fuchsia with blue pollen, from the mountains of Tahiti. It is closely related to the New Zealand species and classified with them in a 'section' of Fuchsia called Skinnera. That's it. The rest of the genus have typically yellow or yellowish pollen. 

4. Finally, I'm about to head to Christchurch this week as the leader of another ASA tour, Natural Landscapes and Gardens of New Zealand’s South Island. We won't see this species in 'the wild' given it only grows on North Island, but we are sure to see tree fuchsia in flower with its blue pollen.