Dear all: Please chime in if you grow Lilium en masse or know how cells reproduce. The Laird of Auchgourish wrote that scales of a Lilium bulb can produce new small bulbs without a piece of the bulb plate, outside tissue culture / micropropagation. I would love to know how that happens. My goal is not to be right from the start but to learn. Might the procedure involve burying the horns of a buffalo when the Steinerian moon is blue? Joke. Iain, you mention "a few wee tricks," and when you are recovered from your surgery I hope that you will communicate those tricks to all of us. Good luck with your operation. Paige Woodward > Can I please comment on Paige Woodward's posting ref Lilium scales > requiring material from the mother bulb's base plate otherwise bulbil > production except by means of micro prop is not possible. If I correctly > understand what Paige's view on this is, if not fulsome apologies, then I > would like to respectfully offer a correction. > > Following propagation experiments here involving in excess of 80 + > different botanical taxa bulbil production can be achieved from almost any > part of a lily bulb scale. A good example of this is e.g. with the new > North American taxon L. pyrophillum which has scales in two or three parts > and as recently as yesterday I potted up over 20 bulbils originating from > a single mother bulb whose scales were placed in damp vermiculite in late > autumn last year. In other cases where e.g. [a] Trumpet Asian species with > long narrow single scales bulbils can be produced from broken scales which > have no base plate tissue, and [b] the Asian Alpine L. lophophorum along > with our sp. nova L. montegena which I am frantically trying to bulk up by > means of both scaling as well as seeds. In the case of LL soulei and > bakerianum where some bulbs last summer and autumn showed signs of basal > rot the sections of the scales with rot were excised using a razor blade > more in hope than anything else however t > > hey proved their gratitude for remedial surgery by producing admittedly > just a few bulbils but better that then the soggy mess anticipated if left > to their own devices. > > There are a few wee tricks which I have been working on to enable the > above and while undoubtedly in need of much 'refinement' the methods and > the growing medium do seem to be settling down to providing at least a > rescue remedy but as Paige points out micro prop would probably be the > best means to aid mass production however the objectives here are > concerned with the maintenance of often rare botanical taxa rather than > production of commerical quantities of hybrids. If anyone wanted more info > along lines similar to that for the seed germination already provided feel > free to ask however as I am about to disappear for a back operation next > week it will need to wait until I get back to work at the end of May so > e-mail me then and I will try to send some info out, it hasn't been > properly written up yet but no doubt it will be one of the 'to do' jobs > when flat on my back. > > Iain > > -- > I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. > We are a community of 7 million users fighting spam. > SPAMfighter has removed 145080 of my spam emails to date. > Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len/ > > The Professional version does not have this message > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/