Ever since I planted these cotton plants last summer, I'd been saying that I would be happy if it could make even just one flower. The north-facing patio where they live gets no direct sunlight, except for a sliver of rays for a few minutes before dusk. Well, it produced the one flower, and yup, I'm happy as hell. Now I wait and see if it produces that precious cotton ball, and I will be beyond happy.
Here are pictures I took the morning after the pictures above. It turns pink! :)
The flower fell off the same day as the pictures above. It leaves a pea-sized ball that grows quite rapidly. These pictures below were taken 7 days later.
Here is the cotton pod another 7 days later.
4 or 5 years ago I purchased cotton seeds off the internet. Sprouted them in the spring, planted them, and by the end of the summer had a dozen of flowers that produced cotton balls from which I harvested the seeds and cotton fiber. I continued sprouting the seeds and growing plants until they were about juveniles, but they would get attacked by mites. And then a few years ago we moved to our current place and I just couldn't transport them for the move. I was hesitant to plant them again, but since I had such an abundance linter-covered seed, I half-heartedly planted the cotton, vigorously sprayed them with water anytime I saw mites, and kept them feed and moist. It paid off this year with the one flower I was asking for.
I started two more cotton plants this season next to these year-old plants, and they're already more than half the height of the older ones. I don't expect that these younger ones will produce a flower this year or even next year, since it's so crowded in that trough. But I'll just wait and see.