When horticulturist Wesley Shaw of Kew Gardens heard about a lonely female of a rare cycad plant coning at Wildwalk-At-Bristol, his match-making instincts were immediately triggered.

By coincidence for this sporadic plant, Kew has a male of the same species currently producing four cones in the famous Palm House.

Known for growing their bright red cones only once every few years, Wesley realised this would be a great opportunity to take pollen from Kew’s male plant and fertilise Wildwalk-At-Bristol’s female.

The female cycad encephalartos ferox at Wildwalk-At-Bristol’s Botanical House began to produce the distinctive red cones in June and they have been looking for a male match ever since.

Kew’s male cycad began to cone on July 24 and the first cone has grown to an impressive half a metre long and is now ready for pollen extraction.

Wesley cut the cone and extracted pollen in the Palm House at Kew Gardens on September 4 and then took it to fertilise the female plant at Wildwalk-At-Bristol on Tuesday.

When the male cone starts shedding its pollen, it elongates and the scales separate, releasing the pollen grains. At this stage, the cone is cut from the plant and placed on a sheet of paper so that the pollen can be collected over a couple of days.

The pollen is then mixed with distilled water and squirted into the female cone with a pipette or a turkey baster.

The female cone is only receptive for a short period when the scales slightly separate, as the specimen at Bristol is showing.

If pollination is successful, the female cone will swell up and expand. It can take up to eight months for the seeds to develop at which point the cone will fall apart releasing the seeds.

Wesley said: “Pollinating these cycads is quite a tricky business, but we are confident it will work. It’s very fortunate to have At-Bristol’s female cycad coning at the same time as we usually have to collect the pollen and freeze it until a female plant cones, sometimes years later, when the pollen has become less viable.” Today many cycads are threatened with extinction in the wild. Cycads can live for hundreds of years and Kew’s male specimen is about 80 years old.