Pollen Tube??

This is a photo of a pistil from an Alsobia 'Chiapas' that I put some pollen on. I wasn't expecting to see anything all that exciting but if you look slightly to the right of center on the picture the pistil shows a circular "hole". I was wondering if I found something interesting or not. When appropriate pollen gets on a pistil all sorts of cool things happen (such as the formation of pollen tubes), but I'm not sure IF you can see a pollen tube or not, and below the fine folks at Wikipedia tell us about pollen tubes, but they don't say if they are visible. I wonder.....?????


"Once a pollen grain settles on a compatible pistil, it germinates in response to a sugary fluid secreted by the mature stigma. Lipids at the surface of the stigma stimulate pollen tube growth for compatible pollen. Plants that are self-sterile inhibit the pollen grains from their own flowers from growing pollen tubes. The presence of multiple grains of pollen has been observed to stimulate quicker pollen tube growth in some plants. The vegetative cell then produces the pollen tube, a tubular protrusion from the pollen grain, which carries the sperm cells within its cytoplasm. This tube is the transportation medium of the male gamete to reach the egg cell.
The germinated pollen tube must then drill its way through the nutrient-rich style and curl to the bottom of the ovary to reach the ovule. Once the pollen tube successfully attains an ovule, it delivers the two sperm cells with a burst. One of them fertilizes the female gamete (the egg cell) to form an embryo, which will become the future plant. And the other one fuses with both polar nuclei of the central cell to form the endosperm, which serves as the embryo's food supply. The endosperm is rich in starch, proteins and oils and is a major source of human food (e.g., wheat, barley, rye, oats, corn). Finally, the ovary will develop into a fruit and the ovules will develop into seeds."

"Sciencing" or The SEEDLINGS are Germinating!!!

 YAY! The seedlings are starting to come up! You will have noticed in a post about three weeks back that we planted all sorts of gesneriad seeds.

Even the seedlings have hair!

 They were/are mighty tiny. It takes a magnifier to see them amongst the dusting of sphagnum moss on the soil surface.

It's unfortunate that the only photo I had to demonstrate the size is over exposed, but here's the head of a pin to show you about how large our baby gesneriads are. They come from tiny seed and they don't disappoint!

Comments???

Sinningia speciosa

 Sometimes rescuing a plant from the Big Box store is worth the effort. This plant wasn't showing any bloom when I bought it, but I was hoping it would be lovely, (I've never met a Gloxinia that wasn't lovely).

It surprised me in many ways.

Not only was it really cool and spotty, like the first photo, but some of the flowers were variable! This one is right next to the spotted one as you can see, and it has much less coloration.

I just love the spots. You can see the connected stamen down in the flower's tube along with the pistil too.

I encourage plant rescue! The life you save may bring you lots of good photo ops.

Gerten's Plant Society Day

I hadn't really noticed till I was setting this up, but it does have some color... you can't say it lacks color!

 We've got color too... posters of different genera and where they come from, business cards and plants and we were set!

We even have friendly, knowledgeable staff. What more can anyone want?

Super Drainage Idea? What Do You Think?

 One of the local hardware stores is closing to remodel and I got these two nifty little PVC pipe pieces for $.35. I was thinking that it would make an easy way to make the center of my pot easy to fill with what ever amendments I'd like to add.

 Really just putting in a smaller Dixie cup does about the same thing (double potting) but this seemed like it could work even slicker. And, since I got the cute little pipe segment with a cover, why not try it out?

 I filled the area around the pipe with some regular potting mix.










I patted down the soil a bit.

I took off the cover, leaving a hole to fill with whatever I thought I wanted to experiment with.

 Grabbed some giant perlite...

filled the hole, and then eased the pipe up and filled it in a little more.











Had my work inspected.... This is very important!

 This is what it looked like, a nice pot with a core of super perlite.

I watered the entire pot of soil and perlite and let the excess moisture drain off.

 Had the inspector inspect things again.... (so many inspections!)

 Wouldn't tubers, which are prone to rot if kept too moist (especially when dormant) or plants that require excellent drainage like this set up? Of course you would have to have a few roots started so that they settle into the surrounding soil, but for example purposes this photo shows what I'm trying to get across.

I find that unless you are a very attentive grower, sometimes things don't always get watered at the optimum moments. Plants in an extremely light mix sometimes get too dry very quickly. This damages the root hair and although the plant might not die, it's not going to perform at it's optimum best either.

Some plants that produce tubers or rhizomes like a moist soil for growth, but you have to pay attention to their needs and see that they don't stay too wet, otherwise tubers rot.

What would a set up like this likely do? This might keep the plant extremely well drained but allow the roots to take up all the moisture they require from a soil mix that might otherwise be considered "heavy" for what you're planting.

So??? Will this work??? Have you tried it on other things??? I'd love to start a discussion...... Comments?????

A Different Streptocarpus 'Noreen'

 A different 'Noreen' for our consideration!

Patty says, "This is the first bloom from my 'Noreen'. I think it's still sort of small but since it's still alive, I'm improving (on Strep growing)."

"It's not been repotted yet, it's growing in my shelf in the coolest room beside my cold growing orchids and it's not in a dome. I'm bottom watering it once a week and fertilizing maybe every 2 weeks."

My question to everyone was: Does culture make a difference in how the plant looks as far as blossom color and leaf color etc? Patty says, "I think fertilizer may make a difference about the size of the flowers, but I think it has nothing to do with the difference in color. Color is more likely to be changed according to temperature. So, since we talked, I've reset my thermometer so I could see my temperatures in that shelf for the last few days. My lowest temp. was 64 deg. F. and the highest 75 deg. F." She also says, " Now, another interesting fact; I'm attaching a picture that I took today besides the picture I took 3 days ago, and when you look and compare the flowers, you'll see my flower grew and it is less dark too, so it faded a little, and this is something that also happens with some orchids, like some of my tolumnias and aerangis  will open more like a cream, yellowish color and then after a few days will become white... why??? I don't know....

So, again.... comments. Note that Patty's flower has much more defined lines and stripes and the yellow of the throat patch might be darker too. Why?

Streptocarpus 'Noreen' Update

 Another update about our club project plant 'Noreen'!!!!

The ruler on the first photo is 12" long. The plant I took home is now somewhat larger than a foot and has approximately 9-10 leaves. I'm somewhat hopeful that it will be in bloom for the spring show in three weeks.

These are the blooms and in all fairness I tried to select the darkest ones. I'm trying to prove a point that culture changes some of the aspects of how the plant looks as well as how it performs as far as quickness of growth and color etc.

The next post will show Patty's flower that has much darker striping in the lines and webbing of the flower.

I tossed out a whimsical theory about this particular plant's genetics that I would like some comments on. I hybridized this plant some years ago. Most of the seedlings weren't quite this pretty and every other plant from that cross is now extinct as far as I know. I really liked the color of this one personally and enjoyed growing the plant. When I switched plant-rooms and added four foot T-8 lights I had a bit of a disaster. A hot summer combined with a very hot room ruined most of the plants I was growing and indeed killed off the parent to this plant. Fortunately, Dennis had taken just one little leaf and propagated it. I purchased some of the babies back from him and then I got enough of the future babies to pass out as a club project. I don't usually have extraordinary luck with Streps in general... sure they grow, but I forget to water them blah, blah, blah.... but this one - at my house - always looks pretty fresh, grows fast and tolerates some abuse.

I've heard that people find that plants hybridized in their general geographical location do better for them than plants hybridized in very different locations. For instance, Texas hybrids don't really like MN winters.... MN hybrids don't do well in Southern state's really hot weather etc. So, what I'm saying is: Does 'Noreen' do well for me because it was the one to survive my particular set of conditions and my sort of plant-abuse?

The one baby that went to the CBS greenhouse is reportedly exactly the same size as when it was passed out. Others have said that their plants aren't really growing all that well. I am thrilled that my plant is jumping out of the pot and is over a foot across. I do know that I'm trying pretty hard not to humiliate myself and kill off the project plant that I thought was such a good experiment, but I'm not really babying it either.

Comments!!!!