PBS Forum

Viable seed is actually very easy to grow.

Use a well-drained compost and make a shallow groove in the surface, lay the seed in the groove, water frugally.

The root appears from one end, anchors itself in the compost and pulls the seed vertical. The cotyledons appear from the top and the seed swells and cracks the seed-case, which falls away.

Just to whet the appetite for more of broadly similar plants to Lanaria and Xerophyta, sort of - try Dilatris corymbosa.

I currently have a potful of seeds on the greenhouse bench......................

All of these three are freely avaialable as seed, albeit most especially from RSA suppliers, although my latest sowing of Xerophyta came from Germany.

I am pretty sure that I tried temperature swings with Lanaria last winter/spring, but I can't be certain.
I set up a soil warming pad on the greenhouse bench on a timer, so 20+C during the day but greenhouse temperature at night - 5-7C. I checked compost temperature in pots and they reached 15C or so above greenhouse temperature when the pad was on.
In our autumn/winters, with cloud-cover being so variable, daytime max. greenhouse temperature can vary 10C to low 30'sC with no heating, all down to the sun.

I need to try things with some fresh seed........

Thanks Robin - that sounds rather extreme, but easy enough to achieve and if it produces results consistantly, what's not to like? 

Any idea, even very roughly, how warm things get in the tank?

Thanks for the thoughts/comments, Uli.

This has been suggested as containing a lot of what are presumed to be important ingredients in smoke, in terms of triggering germination -

Colgin Liquid Smoke Natural Hickory 472 ml : Amazon.co.uk: Grocery

When I sowed the Lanaria, I let some damp leaves and grass smoulder in a small tin for a while and then put the fire out with water, and used that to water the seeds/pot. Nothing so far - several months.
I also have a bottle of the liquid smoke and used that more recently on the Lanaria - again, nothing so far.
I have also wondered about running a hot-air gun over some seeds, very quickly - far from easy to judge what temperature the seeds experience, but I could mix them into a little dy sand, put a thermocouple in that and take them to??? pick a temperature - 50C?? then quickly empty them to cool.
With Lanaria, I may try again early next spring, fresh seed.

If I remember, I'll try some liquid smoke on the Lanaria tomorrow.

Half a lifetime ago, I bought quite a few Protea and Leucodendron seeds, and used the Kirstenbosch smoke primer. The seeds all germinated well, but I have never tried without, so maybe the primer is good, maybe not???

Perlite? Magnesium? Unlikely, but never say never.......

Coverting atmospheric nitrogen to nitrogen available to plants - all legumes have bacteria in their roots that do that, so maybe someone has produced a culture for the bacteria?

Same question as with my other post about Xerophyta.

I have yet to see any germination, but has anyone succeeded from seed?

There is a very old conversation here where the same results as with me are mentioned, but has anyone tried this plant from seed recently?

I have sown it twice with the same result, so far - rapid germination, they make 2 leaves around 2mm or so long and then do nothing. One was using a gritty slightly alkaline compost, the other using ericaceous compost plus sand, both kept very damp.

The first sowing just petered-out over several months. The current seedling are only several weeks old so far, but haven't grown since very shortly after germination.

The SAPO has been totally unreliable and riddled with thieves for several years. Apart from Silverhill, I buy from 3 other supliers in RSA, and they haven't used the SAPO for at least 4-5 years, which is when I first bought from them, so quite probably longer.

I have tried sending seed to RSA in ordinary envelopes and even they were stolen.

Another minor glitch is with the RSA issuing of phyto' cert's - the exporter selects what is to be shipped from a list, and with a flora like RSA has, that list is , not surprisingly, not comprehensive. The exporter has two options if something is not on the list - apply for it to be added and then sit and wait, or declare the item as a species that is on the list. Any hybrids - several hybrid bulbs are well-known in horticulture in RSA - will travel as one or other parent as hybrids are not listed.

Quote from: David Pilling on November 06, 2023, 06:43:09 PMThat's a sobering figure - I've seen many TV programs about the subject, but no one ever says what the energy use is.

Yes, pretty horrendous really.
Whether the figure is that high for producing micro-veg' which seem to be oh so popular at the moment  (and the biggest waste of resources yet invented), I don't know, but it will be online somewhere.

There is plenty of information online published by Philips, plus companies supplying complete growing systems - such as Lumatek in the UK.

People get confused by the efficiency/efficacy of LEDs being so much higher than incandescent lamps - they are, but incandescent lamps are something like 0.05% efficient in turning electrical power into light.
Real-life LEDs are also around the same efficacy as HPS/SON/Lucalox, whatever you choose to call the lamps, but have the advantage over SON of producing almost any spectrum that might be required to manipulate plant growth.
(Both types of lamp require running gear which uses energy, in the case of LEDs that is around 10% of the total energy used on large installations, for small domestic-use LED lamps, the % is far higher.)

I have written an article about light/lighting etc. for the next SABG newsletter if curious/interested, which can be downloaded free from the website once it is published.

"What to do with unsuitable geophytes?"

Compost.

Over 20 years ago, I planted the very attractive form of Scilla peruviana that is in commercial production. Maybe 3-4 years later, the pack of 20-30 bulbs produced an entire wheelbarrow full, and amazingly, I got every one as I have seen none since.

I did inherit a far nicer form from my mother - that made a very dense clump with long lax and narrow leaves, which would have taken 50-100 years to be considered invasive (if that isn't a contradiction in terms). Very sadly, now long gone.

In terms of insolation, summer figures for western, soutrhern Africa are around  60 mols of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) /m²/day, and around half that in winter.

To achieve the higher energy figure in a 12 hour lit period would take something in the order of 6-700W of highly focused LEDs around 15cm above each square metre. (This is around the figure used for "vertical farming").

Quote from: Rdevries on November 05, 2023, 07:33:54 AMThe white form grows flat

Hybrid? Massonia influence?
If you take a look at the book by Duncan, it should not grow flat against the soil.
I have both forms here too - both have upright/erect leaves.

I am unsure that I have ever seen any evidence that insolation affects things like this - leaf orientation - lots of conjecture and supposition, but no more. VERY basic logic would suggest that to catch the maximum amount of light, plants with very few leaves in open ground, not shaded, would lay them flat on the ground, so high insolation = prostrate leaves is, at first glance at least, counter-intuitive.

Quote from: Rdevries on November 05, 2023, 05:46:31 AMLachenelia pygmaea SX4, this form does not seem to want to grow flat to the ground regardless of amount of sun

L. pygmaea does not grow in habitat with prostrate leaves - they are naturally held erect, or close to.

If you search online, you will find that RSA receives around the maximum of insolation as anywhere on earth, so trying to get even close would cost an awful lot in artificial lighting.

Difficult to judge size, but the second - Roscoea?

I can't be bothered to deal with the hassle of loading pic's to the www. Sorry

Lots of pic's appear of what are obviously at least a few different clones in the UK, on EBay. That said, how does cultivation detail affect growth?
Looking at the plants here now, they are quite a bit different to the first one (long gone), that I owned, that had very short (by comparison) leaves that were much greyer-green.

I am in the E midlands.

This looks far more like my first plant, although it is in Canada - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/195548104471?hash=item2d87934717:g:y-EAAOSwI7RjuN-6&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAAwNtz22p9lAZcgDncwYL5MnFaOjsFlpZqQKASlVsgOqMgsh6yM9qQIL98yJjOvdahyU1fo4JoT5VnU0V%2FI7EIT56D2Ac3zb2oN2zx64vamWDbAMUj1f9u1RM5eSJu5CCgt6I8zwREqGN0svIH5UP1tXoVAjPLWwYJgQXH4uEPihvlvdVAOLIM%2FxrzHpuQu6oG6YDR%2BmktAw7lgtjYspvCPoOG2rw%2FmAXIK%2BM%2BLoXmWxx%2F4PSGF3xPhRf14LvhMIZiGw%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR4ydiqHxYg