Immature Seed Pods

Another one of this year's experiments is to try flasking cymbidium seeds, germinating them, and growing the seedlings to blooming stage. The major information source to guide me is "Asymbiotic Technique of Orchid Seed Germination" by Aaron J. Hicks of The Orchid Seedbank Project (http://members.cox.net/ahicks51/osp/Our_Book/our_book.html). Occasionally, Aaron offers some orchid species seedlings on eBay. I recently purchased seedlings from a flask of Cym. erythrostylum. We'll see if they survive and grow up...














I have two Cymbidium species with pods (fruits) maturing. The first is a selfing of Cymbidium insigne var. album, the plant being purchased from Santa Barbara Orchid Estates. Here's a pic of a flower shortly after pollination, where you can see the column having flattened/broadening out in response to the pollination.














One of the two pods from Cym. insigne fell off prematurely because the inflorescence was beginning to dry up. Advice from Cymbidium colleagues suggest that the seeds of this pod would be too immature for flasking, so I went ahead and dissected the pod for educational purposes. I didn't know what to expect.











































The second is a cross between Cym. sinense 'Geyserland' (pod parent) x Cym. sinense 'Oak Hill' (pollen parent).














Pod parent: Cym. sinense 'Geyserland'















Pollen parent: Cym. sinense 'Oak Hill'

Here is a pic of the maturing fruits.














The fruits are still doing well. According to the calendar, they may be ready for flasking as early as December 10, 2008 (nine months, earliest).

I'm curious to see what anthocyanic nuclear genome influence from the pollen parent 'Oak Hill' has on the non-anthocyanic 'alba' pod parent 'Geyserland', assuming the only contribution of the pollen parent to the offspring will be nuclear genome, and not any plastid genome, e.g. mitochondria or chloroplast. I'm not a botanist, so my understanding of plant genetics may be lacking. (Though, I'll make up a good story upon insistance.) Perhaps the pollen does, in fact, contribute plastids to the progeny. I need to look into that... I'm also thinking to have some seed sent off to Gallup & Stribling for treatment with Oryzalin to promote the conversion of diploids into tetraploids.

Present/forcasted weather for this week: mid 80's during the day, mid 60's during the night, a nice 20 degree differential. With Fall approaching, I'm getting ready to shift the orchids from "growing" fertilizer to "blooming" fertilizer.