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tropicbreezent

Seeds from my recent wanderings

tropicbreezent
11 years ago

During my recent holiday I collected many seeds. Most ended getting mixed up so I placed them in damp sphagnum to see how they'd go. So far there seems to be 2 lots that have emerged reasonably fast. The large seeds I collected (palms) don't seem to be doing anything yet, but they usually are slow. Probably should have nicked them first - Nypa fruticans and Attalea amigdalina. The Ptychosperma elegans (Elegant palm) appears to have one seed starting to shoot. Hopefully more will start soon.

First of the fast sprouters is most likely Cordyline manners-suttoniae. I started planting individual sprouts into pots but ended up with too many. So the last lot went into one pot. Don't know what I'm going to do with 40 or 50 of them. Didn't realise there were so many seeds in each of the fruits.

Comments (5)

  • tropicbreezent
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    The other fast sprouter is either Calamus australis or Calamus moti, or even both. I mixed the seeds and the seedlings look identical. Didn't collect so many of those, so only have about a dozen sprouted. Although, a dozen full grown Calamus would be far more problematical than 40 to 50 full grown Cordyline, by a huge margin. The Calamus I would have preferred to collect was C. caryotoides, but unfortunately none were flowering, let alone seeding.

  • Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
    11 years ago

    Wow that's awesomely cool! In the top pot, they kind of look like a grass, but I guess monocots are mostly similar as sprouts.

    I brought home palm tree seeds when we went camping in FL in April and am still looking for them. No idea where in the heck they went...

  • birdsnblooms
    11 years ago

    Tropic..you're so lucky travelling around the world, collecting seeds of all types.

    Do you recall the date you sowed?

    Last year, I ordered Hyophorbe/Bottle Palm seeds from a seller on Ebay..Thought I'd get 3-4 seeds..he sent 30! lol.
    Those I sowed, never sprouted..but I admit being impatient. Especially since a note was attached, saying seeds can take 1-yr to germinate.
    However, I had two seeds left, planted them in an odds an ends aquarium..They sprouted.

    What size pots are seedlings potted in? Although tiny, your spouts look healthy, 'not limp,' especially those in photo two.

    I'll have to Google your Cordyline since I've never heard the name...To be honest, nor am I aware of the palms. :)

    Good luck, and keep us posted.

  • tropicbreezent
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    I answered this post but my reply seems to have disappeared into cyber space. Most probably I clicked on Preview but somehow forgot to click on Submit.

    Thanks for those comments. The Cordylines will look like grass for a while. Then they'll look like over-sized grass for a while longer. There's still more sprouting, I'm just putting them in with the others. Don't know where I'm going to plant them all when they're bigger. It's going to look like a field of Elephant Grass, LOL.

    Probably be a good idea to find those palm seeds Purple. Whilst some can go for years, there are also palm seeds that loose their viability fairly soon.

    'Overseas to collect seeds"? I wish! Can't afford that sort of caper these days. My bank manager might get upset about me missing some of my mortgage payments. Afterall, he's probably got a luxury home, luxury car and luxury yacht to support.

    The Cordyline seedlings are in a 175mm pot, the palms (and all the other seedlings including more Cordyline) are in 100mm pots.

    It was a bit of a worry with the heat up til now but we've been getting a bit of rain lately. There's a lot of sphagnum moss in the pots which maintains a high water content between waterings. As the seedlings are in the shade house they're also getting the advantage of the rain.

  • Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
    11 years ago

    It's a mystery, and doesn't speak well to my housekeeping! It would be easy to get more next April, but solving this mystery would give me peace. I have a long and illustrious history of almost complete incompetence regarding most seeds but I keep trying and do get some cool and edible stuff a lot of the time.

    Hope you'll post updates as these grow - very cool!

    100 mm is a strange measurement! And why not say 10 cm? Metric schmetric. 3.93701 inches, hmm...