FRITILLARIA DAVIDII FRUITING 2011

[chasw]

Thanks David 

[Janis Ruksans]

Fritillaria davidii is her (Chen-yi) Fritillaria sp. # 4. Mine form received from her turned week grower, I lost it and no one flowered. The form from Bob and Ranweig is much more vigorous and it seem (by leaves) that next spring will be very good blooming although I never got seeds from it. From other side - I never tried to handpollinate it. May be it is selfsterile and I need another clone for seeds.
Janis

[Gerry Webster]

Search and ye shall find

http://chenyinursery.com/

Direct from the wild to your garden - allegedly.

[David Nicholson]

Search and ye shall find

http://chenyinursery.com/

Direct from the wild to your garden - allegedly.

I wouldn't be at all surprised. Personally I wouldn't order from her.

[Janis Ruksans]

Search and ye shall find

http://chenyinursery.com/

Direct from the wild to your garden - allegedly.

I don't think that all are from wild. A lot of frits are cultivated in China for medical purposes (I saw pictures with pallidiflora, ussuriensis, walujewii on field planted in long lines). If bulbs would come from wild they would be of different sizes, but those which many years ago I got from her where all very uniform in shape and size. Such usually are cultivated bulbs. Of course - only few were corectly named. In several cases under various names I got one species. Most curious was when under name of Scilla I twice got Polygonum (never got any real Scilla). I don't know how it was with Arisaema and Orchids and others. Personally I ordered only frits, Corydalis and Scilla. Corydalis by size of tubers could be wild collected, although they are cultivated in China for medical purposes, too. Those Arisaeamas which offered PCh, certainly were from this Chinese lady and most were incorrectly named (such information I got from my foreigen friends loving Arisaemas too much - by my opinion).
Janis

[Gerry Webster]

Ever since Chinese frits started appearing in the UK some years ago there have been allegations that at least some of them  have been looted from the wild  - allegations which are difficult to prove or disprove. Some are certainly cultivated for medicinal use; see, for example, this paper by  Leon, Fay & Rix:

www.kew.org/science/ecbot/papers/leon2009fritillaria.pdf

However, it appears that not all the useful species are amenable to commercial cultivation & some are endangered. I have never seen any reference to F. davidii being used medicinally.

[Rann]

Hi Ian & Paul,

I am very interested in your observations of the seed of this strange species.  Are the seeds are as flat as most species and are they more fleshy? Is the capsule stiff and upright, or collapsing like the Japanese species?

Many thanks

Rannveig

[Rann]

Hi Darren & Paul,

I am very interested in your observations of the seed of this strange species.  Are the seeds are as flat as most species and are they more fleshy? Is the capsule stiff and upright, or collapsing like the Japanese species?

Many thanks

Rannveig

[Paul Cumbleton]

Hi Rannveig,
If memory serves, the seeds were fairly typical, flat like most species, though perhaps a little thicker and small in overall size (see photo near the start of this topic). I honestly can't remember what the capsule was like and sadly didn't take any pictures. The seedlings have, for the first time, this year produced leaves that are of adult size, but I doubt the bulbs themselves are yet big enough to flower.

[Maggi Young]

Welcome, Rannveig,  nice to "see" you here. 

On the first post of this thread  ( previous page) Darren shows photos of both the seed pod and seeds.

[Darren]

Happily I can report the seedlings are looking good this autumn and I reckon are only a year or so off flowering. They seem to me to be more vigorous than either parent clone. Thanks to Wilma and Jim Wright I now have offsets of the pollen parent too and hope for a repeat performance in future though my plants of the seed parent have done very poorly for the last two seasons.

To confirm - the seeds are, as Paul says, a bit thicker and smaller than the usual papery seeds, and quite pale in colour too.

As hinted by the pictures - the capsule is held quite straight on a stem at about 45 degrees and has odd pustules on it. It dehisces whilst still green so vigilance is needed. I may still have a picture of the whole plant with the capsules developing which will illustrate this better. I won't be able to post it for a couple of days though.

[Darren]

Found them sooner than I thought. Here is the sequence.

First picture is late April - about a month after pollination. At this stage the leaves are dying back but the two fruiting stems (and their leaves behind the capsules) stayed green and remained green until the capsule was mature - long after the basal leaves had gone.

In early may one capsule aborted because the stem was eaten through by a snail lower down. This picture shows the aborted seeds which were clearly immature and only half the size of the eventual successful ones.

Only a few days later (may 17th) the stem leaves on the mature capsule began to yellow. Then the stem seemed to weaken and shrivel almost overnight, the stem leaves became fully yellow and the capsule dehisced.

So - I do recall that the stem weakened and collapsed immediately as the capsule matured, as Rannveig suggests happens with the Japanese species but as I don't grow any I can't comment further.