Onco from seed

[Diane Whitehead]

I traded seeds with Sergey Banketov and received seeds of a lovely
black and white striped onco, Iris lineolata, collected in the Caucasus.

I have never grown oncos before, but know from experience how many
years some iris take to germinate.

I searched for information about germinating oncos, and came up with
two procedures that seemed easy for me to follow.

I soaked the seeds in dilute bleach (the same dilution that I would use
for my clothes) for 24 hours.  Then in water for a further 12 hours.
I removed the seedcoat from half of the seeds and washed those seeds
in water.

Then I used my usual large-seed sowing - into a ziplock bag with a spoonful
of soilless mix.  I didn't have any information about temperatures, so just
left them in the living room which is 20 C in the daytime and less at night.

I was startled today to find three of the seven seeds that did not have
their seedcoats removed have germinated, in 26 days.

The ones that did have their seedcoats removed have not germinated yet,
and two of the seven seem to have rotted.
 

[Rafa]

Hello Diane,

Oncos have to germinate with cold. You have to put the seeds in the fridge. And if you want you could try to cut the seeds to discover the embrio.

http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=847.0

I also forced this week the seeds from my friend Sergey, so if you haven't success with your seeds I could send you one year old plants from my experiments.

I think this method is very efficient and more cheap than embyo culture, because you don't need so many lab tools.

[Diane Whitehead]

Maybe the accepted idea is that cold is necessary, but I accidentally
discovered that may not be true.

Here is the biggest seedling, 1.5 cm tall, one month after I sowed
the seeds.  It is growing on my window sill, above the heater.

[Rafa]

WOW! just fantastic Diane, maybe the reason is that you  eliminated all the antigermination sustances in the skin.... very interesting!

[Paul T]

Bearded iris traditionally need cold to germinate as well, but if  sown fresh they will often germinate during the summer rather than waiting for the temperatures to drop in autumn.  If the seed is fresh and never allowed to dry out completely a lot of the germiantion inhibitors don't seem to be present in a lot of the seeds (but rarely have I found ALL of them germinate during summer).  I haven't sown bearded iris seed in quite a few years now, and haven't sowed other species until just now with the pacific coast irises I am about to sow this week.

[Susan Band]

Diane,
I believe the bleach is the answer. It does a lot more good than it is credited with. Strangly enough I was just discussing using it with Junos, unfortunatly I have sown mine for this year but was planning to try next year. It is found to acually help orchid germination rather than just clean them. Well done!
Susan

[mark smyth]

Diane can you explain what is happening in your photo? Is the seed to the right producing the shoot? It looks suspended

[Diane Whitehead]

The seeds germinated in the ziplock bag in my first photo.  I moved them
to a pot, but have to buy some more Sunshine mix to cover the seeds.

The seed is on the surface, with a little white stem going horizontally to
the growing plant which has a leaf shoot growing up and a long root down.
I thought I would pull it out to photograph it, but it resisted, so I'm not
sure how long the root is.  Oops - now I see.  The tip has emerged from
the bottom of the pot.

I need to get it in a deeper pot, fast.