BULB LOG 05 -31st January 2007

[mark smyth]

Yikes! the hair!! I've made an appointment to have the hedge clippers run over it tomorrow at 6pm.

On the bottom row of the Galanthus found in the garden centre is one with a single mark - elwesii monostictus. Nothing special except ... it didnt close even at 2.5C on Tuesday morning.

A great time was had with the Youngs and all the chat at the lecture. One person travelled a great distance to listen to what I had to say.

http://www.srgc.org.uk/bulblog/log2007/310107/log.html

[Maggi Young]

Yeah, she even managed to keep awake... mind you, the lady is known for her charity work and she had a free bus ticket for the journey!

It was a pleasure to see you, Mark and we all enjoyed your talk very much. You were especially good at coping with the hecklers at the back and front of the hall, no mean feat! Lovely photographs and lots of tips, hints and inspiration, we all had a great evening of snowies.

And thank goodness for your hair, Mark, if they're looking at that they won't notice me!!

[mark smyth]

LOL!

It's sooo grey too! Cant wait 'til I'l white all over

[Lesley Cox]

When it's white all over Mark, will you be painting on little green patches?

[Maggi Young]

Lesley, it is at times like this when I am fondest of you 

[claykoplin]

Ian - I read the bulb log late last night right before I went to bed, and awoke early with what for me was an epiphany, though it was probably a quick, logical deduction for you and the wizened ranks of the forum.  Surely the trigger that has caused your Narcissus to have split coronas (I have to admit I'm not quite sure I know what this means as I couldn't quite comprehend what I was looking at in the picture on the left) and narcissus deformity (okay, I DID apprehend this) for the very first time is the same trigger that caused a pot of Fritillaria Chitralensis seedlings to sprout after a 6-year dormancy.  If the fritillaria are triggered into growth sometime between the August/September seed planting "window" and the January sprouting we observe, the trigger must have occured in that time frame.  It seems like the most obvious vector would be temperature if the pots have been under glass.  Did you have any record cold or warm snaps during this time frame?  Any change in watering regime or soil chemistry/texture (I'm assuming the seeds were not repotted, and that your watering regime has remained constant).  If you could identify the trigger, it might be a cultural breakthrough that has implications not only for the F. Chitralensis, but for other fritillaria, for the plant kingdom, and, perhaps, world peace! 

[Maggi Young]

HEY! Clay, Who are you calling a wizened rank! Some of us are not as young as we once were, nor as young as we might like to consider ourselves, but -- "wizened"?? I will only admit to a few light laughter lines, and don't you forget it!

[Ian Y]

Clay, I just wish it was that obvious.
The chitraensis seed has not had any different treatment or vastly different climate to the last few years so I do not think it can be that especially as I have several other pots sown in 2004, 05, 06 all treated exactly the same and there is no germination in them yet.
Yes we have just had a very mild January, but we had that last year, and we have had mild winters for the last few years as well.
As to the split coronas - what I was showing in the left hand picture is the flower near the centre where you can see all the anthers and stamen and at the base are a few petal like strips which is all that formed of the corona and extreme form of splitting.
Now the big question is when did the damage to the growth cells occur?
Did it happen when the embryo flower was forming deep inside the bulb last spring or has it happened more recently when the flower expanded to its full size?
I do think that this form of flower mutation, if it is not genetic, is most likely caused by temperature or moisture levels. But is it too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry?
Keep the thoughts coming as the more minds working on it then the better chance we have of arriving at the correct answer.

[claykoplin]

Sorry Maggi, a bit of a slip.  I meant widened ranks of the forum .

I overlooked the obvious split corona on the Narcissus, I thought that was just the petals falling away as the flower died back.  Wow, what a strange development.

I stared at the 7 suprise fritillaria chitralensis seedlings and am perplexed by the enigma of seeds that lie dormant for 6 years, then suddenly sprout in spontaneous unity.  The overwhelming odds are that there was some trigger that broke dormancy for all 7 seeds.  Perhaps a symbiotic micchoryzal fungi found the pot through the offal of a passing slug or spores wafted into the pot on a stray breeze.  Perhaps the trigger was a gradual change in soil pH or demineralization brought on by 6 years of watering that broached a threshold.  The important lesson for me is:  Don't throw those stubborn pots of Fritillaria seeds out!  It will be interesting to see how your other fritillaria seeds sprout this spring.  This is my favorite time of year for the bulblog, which will be my lifeline until our spring finally starts breaking and seedlings finally begin sprouting in mid/late April.

Maybe the sprouting trigger is as simple (and impossible to replicate) as the right moisture at the right temperature for the right duration during the right date "window" they like to sprout in.

If I can sucessfully bring seeding chitralensis or seeds into the fold, I'll start the grand experiment at 60 Degrees North, where 6 hour of daylight and an alltime record high temperature for this day of 11C (at 10pm night) are making me that much more anxious for spring to get on with it.

[Maggi Young]

Okay, Clay, sounds a reasonable excuse, I'll accept your apology

[annew]

I've had at least 8 narcissi with split coronas this year (the first time ever), but ONLY on self-sown seedlings in the sand plunge - none in potted ones. Hmmmm...

[claykoplin]

As I'm off to Anchorage to shop and finally remembered to put grey stock on my list - I had to hunt back to Log 4, 2006 to remind that it was 18% greytone, not 16% that helps true colors, reduce jpg filesize, etc.  http://I also remember as I thumbed through the log a thought I had for a future log suggestion:  Pollination.[/color]  There are mixed bits here and there throught the logs on pollination, and I was just able to recall how to pollinate Corydalis and put it to work on C. Densiflora which is blooming under lights now (See Maggi, the log is slowly but surely widening me).  I was suprised that it was already about setting seed.

One thing I've wondered about pollination - if you're running from fritillaria to fritillaria or crocus to crocus, etc. on a nice sunny day when pollen is flowing, how do you keep from crossing them?  Do you have a brush for every other plant or do you somehow sterilize the pollen from the brush as you move from plant to plant?  I noted in one of Ian Christie's Daphne grafting notes that he sterilizes his blade between cuttings.  I do similar when dividing dahlias, sterilizing my razor in alcohol from clump to clump so that virus doesn't spread if present.  I even sterilize my scissors between plants when cutting dahlias for vases in late summer/fall when they're in bloom.

[claykoplin]

Drat.  I guess I have a little to learn about forum special effects.  I was trying to color and "flash" the bulb log suggestion so Ian would pick it out, and it posted funny.  I guess one effect at a time is the key.

[Ian Y]

I have taken note of your suggestion Clay.
I use both grey card and a large sheet of cheap grey cloth kept on a cardboard roller see bulb log:-
http://www.srgc.org.uk/bulblog/log2006/240506/log.html

[Diane Whitehead]

There are things other than brushes to use for pollinating.  Which one you use depends on the size of the flowers and the amount of pollen.  Some have so much pollen it drips all over and others have so little you have to slit the anther to get any at all.

My favourite way is to hold the stamen with a pair of slanted tweezers (not the sharply pointed kind, but ones with a broad slanted end) and then brush the pollen on to the stigma.  [in case you have difficulty finding these tweezers, I found where our local drugstores keep them - in the cosmetics department, rather than the first aid section which is where I first looked.]

If I am using pollen from someone else's flowers, I equip myself with small plastic bags with a self-stick label and a Q-tip (cotton-tipped sticks also from the drugstore) or a piece of pipe cleaner inside.  Then I can get pollen without disturbing the look of the flower, though at a flower show I always do the pollen collection at the end of the show (with permission of the owner of course).

If I want to use pollen later, I keep stamens in a dish in the kitchen (and try to remember to label them).  If I have lots, as when I used to do lots of rhododendron hybridizing, I use the ends of envelopes standing upright in a small box. (I remove letters from one end and cut the other end to a usable size.)  Information can be written on the envelope end, and the stamens dry so they don't mould.  The pollen always lasted through the whole of the rhododendron season for me (February to July) though if you want to save pollen from one year to the next, there are methods of freezing it, which I have not done.