Eriophyton wallichii

[Lori S.]

Hello.  For anyone who has had experience at germinating Eriophyton wallichii, could you please describe what methods worked?  Say, Maggi for instance? 
Thank you very much for any info.
Lori

[Ian Y]

Lori, I did raise this plant from seed many years ago, the seed was collected on one of a number of trips that we had shares in.
It was sown in the winter scattered on the surface of a loam, grit and peat,which we still used in those days, then covered with a layer of grit.
Germination followed in the spring, but I did not prick out the seedlings that season. The plant died down the following winter and in the next Spring I checked the pot to see if anything was alive and I found this plant retreats underground to fat  storage  roots in winter.
From then on I repotted it every spring just as growth was about to start and we showed this plant successfully l for several years.
Hope this helps.

[Maggi Young]

Magnar and Toril Aspaker  have grown the plant in their  open garden - where it even flowered.  There are photos in the forum....


Magnar has written in reply to Lori  :  Yes we grew E. wallichi for several years until it died in a bad winter three years ago. But as far as I can remember, I didn't grow it from seed. I must have bought it, or may be it was given to me. And I never saw seeds on it. Then in the summer of 2015 I renewed the scree where it had been growing, and to my pleasure and surprise I found two seedlings from it. So obviously there must have been seeds all the same. This also tells me that the seeds germinated after at least one year outside in the scree, may be more. Now I must add, that in the mean time I had bought seeds from a couple of wild seed collectors. I had some germination after sowing in the late autumn and leaving the pots outside. But these seedlings became very long and slender, and didn't at all look like the compact ones I found in my scree. So I'm not sure they were correctly identified. Magnar."

http://magnar.aspaker.no/Eriophyton%20wallichii%20P08.jpg

Ian and I wonder if the  new plants Magnar found were indeed seedlings- which they could be since the plants had flowered or perhaps even  regrowth on parts of the  old storage roots that may have been left after the  winter damage.

[Gabriela]

Last year I obtained 2 seeds  from AGS seedex (wild coll. Holubec so no doubt about ID). As I didn't know what to do with those 2 seeds, of which one proved to be not good actually, I placed the 1 seed in a small bag with moist vermiculite/in the fridge (+/-4C). I don't know if you can see the seedling, it was quite happy looking:

Germination after +/- 2 months, and it even grew a bit afterwards under lights indoors but it didn't like it of course (I don't have a lighted cool room). Hope this helps a bit.

[Lori S.]

Thank you very much for relating your experiences with it.  It's good to know that nothing more complicated than a single period of cold stratification might be needed!  I'm going to start with room temperature (easily done and should suggest whether cold stratification is needed at all?) and if there is no germination in a few weeks, I'll put the pots in the cold room, which will hopefully do the trick. 
Many thanks, again.   

[Maggi Young]

As  a plant from the high Himalaya I would think a period of cold is certainly needed for this plant. It would be odd if it were not, wouldn't it?

[Ian Y]

I would also think that it would need a cold period to stimulate germination.



Here is one of our show plants of Eriophyton wallichii. We never got flowers to form hence no seed either.



I did root cuttings both stem and leaf cuttings rooted and grew but none formed the storage roots to take them through the winter dormancy so did not survive beyond the season.

[Lori S.]

As  a plant from the high Himalaya I would think a period of cold is certainly needed for this plant. It would be odd if it were not, wouldn't it?

You and Ian may well be right - I don't know but will try to test it, at least in an informal way.  I'm not sure that the environment determines a species' germination requirements, though?  I have the impression - may well be wrong - that it may follow more closely along genus and sometimes family lines?  In my experience, albeit limited and not scientifically-controlled, I have found various high elevation species to germinate at room temperature.
It would be very interesting to see what degree of coincidence there really is between high elevation species and requiring cold stratification to break dormancy, and to see if it is higher than for, for example, woodland species. 
Such data though would have to come from controlled study and/or multiple varied experiments and a lot of experience (such as that done by Dr. Norm Deno and also that done, for example, by Kristl Walek) in order to be reliable.  For example, if I may make some assumptions.... setting seed pots outside for the winter seems to be a very common practice in your area, where it seems you have quite an ideal climate for it - enough temperature variation to effect stratification for the species that need it, moisture and humidity, yet still a short winter season (as compared to the almost 5 months of complete dormancy here in a cold, continental climate).  (I doubt that many gardeners there would even think of this as "stratifying" their seeds, though it is.  I think the Deno work and terms are only starting to be known more widely outside of North America?)  Correct me if I'm wrong - it seems people there would have little need, generally, to start seeds of hardy plants indoors...  so starting seeds in the "normal" way (setting outside for the winter) wouldn't actually prove that the seeds needed stratification to germinate.  it would take an intentional effort to actually test whether the same species would germinate equally well at a constant room temperature, if you get my drift.    
So, anyway, yes, you may very well be right about Eriophyton wallichii or even possibly in general... I'm just not sure that coming from cold, high elevations will necessarily dictate that those species will need stratification to germinate.  It would take some testing to actually prove that, IMO.  With all your experience, perhaps you already have done enough of the sort of experimentation I mentioned to have a very good sense of this... in which case, please feel free to correct any misconceptions I may have expressed. 

[Lori S.]

And, I forgot to mention... fantastically beautiful plants!!