Editing Akebia quinata (section)

== Flowering, fruiting, and harvest ==

Flowers are functionally unisexual and the species is late-acting self-incompatible: self-pollen reaches the ovules but does not fertilize them, so a single vine, or two cuttings of the same clone, produces little or no fruit. <sup>[[#cite_note-3|[3]]]</sup> Geitonogamy (self-pollination between flowers of one plant) is common in the wild — in a two-population Chinese study 65% of flowers carried self-pollen, most stigmas were pollen-limited, and natural mature fruit set was only about 1.2%. In hand-pollination trials, young fruit set fell from about 0.85 with pure cross-pollen to 0.18 when self-pollen dominated the mix, while a little self-pollen alongside cross-pollen did no harm. <sup>[[#cite_note-3|[3]]]</sup>

In practice this means planting at least two genetically different vines, and often hand-pollinating. Extension and botanic-garden sources say flowers must be cross-pollinated by a different plant and recommend hand-pollination for reliable fruit, and cultivar profiles repeat that two plants of the species are needed. <sup>[[#cite_note-4|[4]]]</sup><sup>[[#cite_note-5|[5]]]</sup><sup>[[#cite_note-10|[10]]]</sup><sup>[[#cite_note-11|[11]]]</sup> A western Washington (zone 8b) grower hand-pollinates and reports several hundred fruit in ordinary years and well under ten in the year pollination was skipped; the same grower notes heavy bearing from one vine and none from a second. <sup>[[#cite_note-12|[12]]]</sup> Reported pollination is carried mainly by hoverflies, honey bees and small solitary bees, with wind suspected. <sup>[[#cite_note-7|[7]]]</sup> A Reddit grower in the UK fruited an unnamed normal vine paired with an 'Alba', while a commenter whose 'Alba' and purple-flowered plants flowered at different times got no cross-pollination — bloom overlap matters when pairing clones. <sup id="cite_ref-14">[[#cite_note-14|[14]]]</sup>

Vines can bear in the first or second year; orchard-scale summaries describe a short juvenile period of about two years before heavy fruiting. <sup>[[#cite_note-13|[13]]]</sup><sup>[[#cite_note-7|[7]]]</sup> The pods split open naturally on the vine when ripe and should be picked then — they do not fall at ripeness, over-ripe fruit dries on the vine, and opened fruit is perishable, with mold reported when rain enters split pods. <sup>[[#cite_note-13|[13]]]</sup><sup>[[#cite_note-14|[14]]]</sup>