A couple of weeks ago, I received several collected Cryptocoryne nurii plants. A few of the plants had a seed capsule on it already.
Yesterday, one of the seed capsules opened up.
The capsule contained roughly 20 seeds
Here’s a close up of one of the seeds.
Since I’ve been experimenting with micropropagation, I decided to try and germinate the seeds in vitro. Wish me luck!!
Well, its been about 3 weeks now since I applied Gibberellic acid to my plants. There were several observations I’d like to report:
1) If the plant already had an almost mature spathe present, the spathe opened up prematurely.
2) If the plant had a immature spathe, the spathe had a growth spurt, and then slowed down. In some cases, it then melted.
3) Some plants showed spathes starting to develop within days of the application. Within this group, some spathes proceeded normally and opened up just fine. In other cases, the spathe was deformed.
4) In some plants, the petioles have elongated about 33% – even on existing leaves.
A few case examples:
In the C. elliptica pictured here, immature spathes opened up early. But then other spathes came up looking normal.
The C. alba pictured above had a spathe develop more or less normally, though I think its smaller than it should be. Not that I’ve ever flowered this plant before. Just a gut feeling here.
C. minima spathe pictured here is clearly deformed. The limb is greatly elongated.
It hasn’t opened up yet in this picture.
In the C. zukali pictured here, you can clearly see a twisted malformed immature spathe.
This L. narii ‘Red’ had a spathe develop more or less normally.
So, what’s the conclusion? It seems gibberellic acid does work, both on crypts and lagenandra plants to induce flowering. However, this acid should be used with caution, with a much less concentration than I used if you are to prevent malformation. What that concentration is? I’d start with 25 mg/l vs. the 250 mg/l that I used.