Tropaeolum tricolorum tubers

Uli Urban johannes-ulrich-urban@T-Online.de
Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:17:00 PDT
Dear All,

Today I repotted my pot of Tropaeolum tricolorum, I had left it
undisturbed in the same pot for some years but felt I should repot it
this summer before it starts to grow.

I remember having planted 2 or 3 round tubers from different sources.

To my surprise the whole pot was full of tubers, some of them showed
just the first sign of growth. There were 3 distinct type of tubers:

Big solitary ones, the biggest one about 3 inches diameter slightly
elongated. Then there was a funny chain of 5 smallish round tubers each
about half an inch across, all linked to each other by a thin brittle
root, the distance between the tubers being about half an inch to an
inch. This chain might have been longer but as the linking root was
brittle it might have broken into pieces when I turned the pot over. And
a third type of tuber was there, long finger-like irregularly shaped
tubers with fatter and slimmer sections. And then there were
intermediate forms in between these 3 types, so it looks as if  the
tuber can have any shape or size.

This is the only winter growing Tropaeolum that reliably sprouts each
year (hope it does so after I disturbed it) whereas the other ones like
T azureum or T brachyceras can have very prolonged dormancies.
Has anybody else observed these distinct types of tubers in the same
species?

Bye for today, greetings from warm and moist Germany,   Uli


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