Cold-hardy.com * Gardening is fun!

New Batch of Bamboo Seedlings

February 12, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

In early winter, I have germinated 10 Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ bamboo seedlings to test germination rate. I stored the rest to start growing them later. To preserve space I decided to germinate the majority in late winter, so that they can be moved outside as soon as possible.

Their time arrived and I placed all the seeds into relatively small pot that should be enough for them to start showing some of their basic characteristics. The best part of growing bamboo seedlings is the fact, that some of them may show extra features like variegation, cold-hardiness, sun tolerance, drought resistance or how vigorous the plant is. Many characteristics are not visible until later, when bamboo gets mature enough, but some can be evident from the very beginning. Some of the seedlings are strong from the beginning, and there are always seedlings, that “complain” about everything and rarely live more than a couple of years. The goal is to find any possible seedling that would end up having any of the genetic treats that would make it special. It’s fairly easy to start the seeds, but eventually they start taking a lot of space and you have to make selections and decide which of the seedlings are worth keeping.

Among albino seedlings that are too degenerated to survive, there are usually some variegated seedling that are healthy enough to survive. They may lack vigour and would have trouble surviving from seed in the wild, but with some help, they can be grown to the point, when they can thrive. Variegation often shows later in plants development and sometimes, even if the seedling shows some signs of variegations early, those features can fade away completely as bamboo gets maturer. That’s why you can’t really tell how special bamboo plant is, unless it’s completely healthy and growing for some time. Based on observation, you can pick good candidates that could eventually become worth growing for whatever reason.

I’ve had some luck during the germination trial and one of the plants appeared with serious issues producing chloroplasts, which results in unnaturally pale and variegated bamboo seedling. Low photosynthesis rate makes it grow much slower, but with some pampering, I was able to keep it alive. With all the remaining seeds (at least ten times more seeds), the number of variegated seedling should be even greater. It was not.

Strange colouration could be a sign of variegation.

There were many seedlings that started showing some minor striping on their first couple of leaves, but those are usually just temporary and will eventually fade out. They can develop some sort of variegation later, so if they are growing healthy, it’s worth growing them for a while longer. One of the seedlings shows more pronounced white striping and even some kind of leaf deformation. I have yet to see if it’s just deformed and will perish before it’s first shoot, or perhaps it’s just showing first signs of variegation.

One of the seedlings is showing similar variegation to that first seedling from the test round. It has similar striping and also fades from pale green to yellow leaf with green stripes, but it’s much darker in the beginning and it actually shows some stripes that are completely green right after the leaf unfolds. If that doesn’t change, it may become more vigorous and healthy, but greener version of my previous variegated seedling.

There are also other bamboo seedlings that also show signs of variegation, but I intend to wait a while for them to become more evident. I’ll update this post in a week or so.

What do you think of this post?

Awesome (2)
Interesting (1)
Useful (1)
Boring (0)
Sucks (0)

How to propagate Drosera cuttings in water

February 9, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

When I took my Drosera capensis seedlings inside for the winter, I’ve had severe aphid infestation. To battle the vermin, I used strong insecticide diluted in distilled water. It removed the vermin and only removed the dew for a couple of days. After that the seedlings looked better than before treating with insecticide. When I saw they have lost their dew and started curling their tentacles as if they would have caught something, I thought about loosing the poor seedlings and whole year of growing would become wasted. As they recovered, I started thinking about making leaf cuttings.

Compared to growing from seed, Drosera cuttings are way faster option. Seeds are extremely tiny and can only hold small limited amount of food for a fresh seedling to start growing. With cuttings, there’s much more energy stored in the leaf, which eventually grows roots and tiny plantlets and restart considerably faster. I usually prefer growing seedlings as it’s usually a bit more rewarding. With cuttings, you always get the plants with identical genetic material, great thing if your mother plant is worth cloning. Drosera species are often able to produce hybrids – some are completely sterile and therefore can’t produce viable seeds. In that case, asexual propagation is the only option.

I decided to try taking a couple of whole Drosera capensis leaves and placing them into zip-lock bag, filled with distilled water. All parts of plant can be used to create cuttings as long as they are alive, so I also took a couple of flower stalks from the flowers that already ripened and started turning yellow. I tried some of the yellow and some of still green parts of the flower stalk. I placed the bags right next to other Drosera plants under strong growing lights. Usually leaves can be cut into 2.5cm (an inch) long sections, but I just squeezed the leaves into the bag and only cut down the flower stalks. When they start rooting, leaves can always be chopped between the newly emerged plantlets before planting.

Small Drosera capensis plants — Small *Drosera capensis* plants

It was not the best idea to use zip-lock bags and I had to throw away a couple of them, before they actually started growing small plants. I did not clean the leaves and there were also some remains of captured insects that made the water cloudy and perhaps even caused some of the leaves to rot.
In a bit less than two months, small plants emerged from leaf cuttings. First, they pushed out a couple of carnivorous leaves, and in a couple of weeks, first roots followed as well. By using stored energy from the mother plant’s leaf, they tend to grow much faster than plants propagated from seeds, which means propagation of Drosera by cuttings is way faster and more efficient, at least for Drosera capensis.

Cuttings after their first meal, temporary placed into chopped living moss

7 days later, moss started to grow. Two young Drosera capensis plants grew incredibly fast.

very vigorous growth of drosera cuttings — Two weeks after planting, both, Drosera cuttings and moss growth exploded

What do you think of this post?

Interesting (12)
Awesome (7)
Useful (5)
Boring (0)
Sucks (0)

Plant albinism

February 4, 2016 tarzan Comments 2 comments

In some plants, albinism is quite common

Albinism in plants is partial or complete absence of green chlorophyll pigment, which is essential for any plant to convert inorganic molecules into larger, organic molecules. Albinism interferes with photosynthesis which often leads to plant’s death. Well, unless the plant is parasitic, it doesn’t stand a chance of survival without photosynthesis. In the case of partial plant albinism, there is some chlorophyll production, but there are also parts of the plant that are lacking the green pigment. Partial albinism can be the cause of plant tissue variegation, such as variegated leaves, fruits, flowers or stems. In some cases partial albinism causes flowers to appear white even if the plant’s chlorophyll production is otherwise normal. According to one of the theories I’ve came across when reading about the issue, albino seedlings lacks a trigger hormone which is essential to initiate the chlorophyll production. Seeds can loose some of the needed hormones during storage, possibly due to mould infection. Seedlings that appear completely white or yellow usually die in the first couple of weeks, when they use all the food stored inside the seed.

Albino Phyllostachys arcana 'Luteosulcata' seedling — Albino *Phyllostachys arcana* ‘Luteosulcata’ seedling

Some plants, including many bamboo species, can have quite a lot of genetic mutations that cause albinisim. While germinating Phyllostachys arcana ‘Luteosulcata’ seeds, I noticed a large number of sprouts that were light pink, white or yellow colour and had no green pigment. Some of the first leafs had also shown minor difference in strength of green colour. There is a chance, that the lighter green seedlings will end up as partial albinos. Seeds usually store enough energy for the bamboo seedlings to grow up to three leaves, before they deplete the reserves, which makes them less dependant on nutrients from the growing medium. In later phase of growth, different colours can be the result of nutrient deficiencies, but at the stage of small seedling, that can’t really be the cause. The seedling colour could be slightly different because of other factors, for example, difference in stored enzymes or hormones, seed age, physical damage or genetic mutation.

Albino bamboos will perish in around two or three weeks. I might try to keep them around for a while longer, using lightly sugared water solution and foliar feeding. The albinism is supposed to be unconditional, without a chance for the seedlings to somehow restart chloroplast production. I will try to foliar feed those seedlings with plant matter from healthy bamboo leaves. If the theory about plant lacking triggering hormone is right and if those hormones can travel into the albino seedlings through the leaf via diffusion or through stomata, perhaps introducing the albino seedling to hormones from healthy leaves can trigger the plants to start producing green photosynthetic pigment and avoid certain death.

Albino seedling with fully developed roots

What do you think of this post?

Useful (3)
Interesting (2)
Awesome (1)
Boring (0)
Sucks (0)

Goji berry

January 31, 2016 tarzan Comments 0 Comment

Every couple of years, there’s a plant that gets widely popular and several years ago, Goji berries were sold in vast quantities due to their alleged health benefits. Goji which is also called wolfberry, is the fruit of Lycium barbarum and Lycium chinense. Both shrubs are from the nightshade family, which includes potato, tomato, tobacco and chili peppers. They can grow up to 2 or 3 meters tall and can either be trained as a grape vine or left growing in a shrub form.

It offers good cold hardiness and drought tolerance, can grow in all kinds of soil and likes full sun. Flowers first appear in early June. Bees around here seem to love the flowers, even if they ignored them completely at first. First couple of seasons there were no pollinators that would show any interest in Goji flowers, bees were all around, but haven’t really visited the plant. Without pollinators, Goji flowered normally, but they only managed to set a couple of berries. In a couple of years bees started visiting the flowers. Berries start ripening around August and usually don’t stop until the first frost.

Goji plants can easily be propagated using cuttings or root divisions. One time, when I pruned the shrub, I left branches laying on the ground for a while and later discovered that many of them rooted. Before the growing season ended, they managed to create strong root system and first flowers started to appear. Branches will root if you place them into glass of water or moist soil. They can also be grown from seeds, but it takes quite a bit more time and it isn’t really the best option because of easy rooting of cuttings.

Even if you are not into healthy food (like me), Goji can offer a lot. It attracts bees and offers them food from early summer to late fall and when berries start to get ripe, you get to see the birds picking them for you.

Bee carrying Goji flower pollen on its legs

What do you think of this post?

Useful (4)
Awesome (0)
Interesting (0)
Boring (0)
Sucks (0)