Wednesday, October 24, 2012

seed capsule

A couple of days ago I removed the dried up petals (bugs love to hide there) and was a bit surprised to find a seed capsule underneath. Sometimes you have two plants of the same kind flowering, want to get seeds, pollinate and nothing happens. And then you have one flower flowering all on its own and there's a fruit. Go figure. :)

9 comments:

  1. Wow, and how long does it take before it matures that you can already plant?

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    1. You need to wait until the seed pod has dried up, then it can be opened with water. If it opens the seeds should be ripe and can be sown right away ;)
      My guess is around January/February..

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  2. How strange! Do you think there will be seeds in there? If so, do you think it pollinated itself or from a nearby plant?

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    1. I'm sure there will be seeds inside. An empty seed capsule never develops to this size, it dries up very quickly. Self-pollination can happen with lithops but it's rare. There wasn't any lithops or other mesemb flowering at that time so I'm pretty curious whether the seeds will be viable. Maybe I'll try sowing them some time..

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  3. Hi Rika! Do you have any good resources for figuring out what variety a lithops might be? I have several plants but all of them came unlabeled, and I'd really like to know what they are. One is getting ready to bloom for the first time, and I understand that flower color can help narrow it down, but what else can I do to figure it out? Thanks! Your help, as always, is so wonderful!

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    1. Hi Eileen!
      lithops.info is a usual website to look for identification. It's possible and mostly not very difficult to find the species. Sometimes also subspecies and variety are quite obvious. To identify a nameless lithops down to the cole-number isn't possible because being nameless it doesn't have a number. If you upload pictures of your plants I could try to help you. ;)
      Oh and yes, the flower color, markings or the size/shape of the cleft help the identifiaction.
      :)

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    2. Thanks, Rika! That was a helpful site. I'm still not sure though. I posted a public photo to my facebook. Here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=685075261698&set=a.685075256708.2100771.17700023&type=3&theater I hope that works. I think I might have a karasmontana, it's the one with the red top (it's the one that is now working on blooming, so flower color will help). Other than that I'm sort of clueless still. Love your site! Thanks for your help :)

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    3. Thank you Eileen :)
      Yep, you're right, the red one (really pretty!) is a karasmontana , as well as its neighbor to the left (check lithops.info for subspecies). The rest are salicolas. ;) All in a very good shape!

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    4. Ahh! THANK YOU! That was SUPER helpful!

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