Podophyllum pleianthum seed harvesting

[Gene Mirro]

I have a few huge plants of Podophyllum pleianthum, with dozens of green "apples".  How can I tell when the seed is ripe?  Do the fruits change color?  Do they need a lot of warmth to ripen the seed?  If so, I may be out of luck.  My Podophyllum emodi ripened its seed months ago.

[Lesley Cox]

There is a beautiful photograph in an AGS bulletin of the fruits of PP. hexandrum (emodi), pleianthum and peltatum. The impression given is that P. pleianthum's fruit is almost pure white when ripe but those here in NZ and Australia who grow it say the ripe fruit is pale green, jade green maybe.

Given that it flowers (here) From October and in the NH approx April/May, as does P. hexandrum, the fruit should be ripening for you now or very soon. I imagine it will feel a bit squashy when ripe and the skin will tear easily.

[johnw]

I harvested the fruit from delavayi x pleianthum yesterday, 8-10 pods and got 1 big seed and 1 very small weak seed.  The back-cross on it with delavayi produced one thin lifeless seed.  P. pleianthum is still in fruit and I should have harvested those as well but that will have to wait until the week's end. It would appear that without a different clone about fruit may form but seeds are not produced. When I hand-pollinated pleianthum with another pleianthum the fruit is 3 to 4 times bigger than what I see this year left to their own  devices.

johnw

[Gene Mirro]

On my plants, the fruits are the size of plums, and they are turning from green to light green, and are becoming soft.  Should I open one up?

[johnw]

Gene - Yours should be ripe by now in Washington. In fact I could have harvested mine a few weeks ago.  The fruit on my pleianthums are about the size of a small fig so it would seem that yours have set a goodly lot of seed.

johnw

[Tony Willis]

Gene

I have only just seen this post as I am in Turkey at the moment.

I find the pods are soft and detach from the plant easily when ripe.They do not change colour.  The seed has a fruity smell and is a sod to clean as it is covered in a thick sticky goo. A pod can contain one seed or fifty but those that are infertile do not develop and drop off,therefore if they are still on the plant they should be good. The seed does not store and should be sown at once.

[Gene Mirro]

Tony, how do you clean the fruity pulp off the seeds?  What a mess.

[Tony Willis]

Tony, how do you clean the fruity pulp off the seeds?  What a mess.

Gene

'what a mess is an understatement' I think.

I scoop them out of the fruit with a spoon and then I put the whole lot in a sieve and run it under cold water whilst rubbing it against the holes with my fingers. A lot comes of and I then pick the residue of each seed individually with my fingers!!

Not quite like collecting lily seeds.

[Lesley Cox]

Can one of you or someone else post pictures of the ripe fruit and of the squashy contents, preferably in situ please? The picture in a previous AGS Bulletin seems to be quite misleading as it shows the fruit as pure white.

[Maggi Young]

There is a picture from Tony Willis, here  ... and other podophyllish stuff : http://www.srgc.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5449.msg154402#msg154402

[Tony Willis]

Maggi

I had forgotten that thread.

Last year I had a plant produce a pure white fruit which had just three seeds(I grew this from seed from red fruited plants). These have germinated and made small plants so I wait to see what colour fruit they will produce.