wait, keep it covered.

It sounds like the bulb has lost a lot of it's size and energy. The way these bulbs are grown to be reliable bloomers is that they are grown for several years without being allowed to bloom. That means the flower stalk is usually cut off when it appears. This allows the bulb to direct all its energy on leaf and bulb growth. The bulbs must go dormant to trigger the bloom cycle. Usually the bulbs are just left to dry up in a cool and dark place in late summer through late fall. Then the cycle begins again in early spring, at least for the commercial varieties. Professional grows keep cutting the flower stalk, so that by the time the consumer buys and plants one of these bulbs, it's almost guaranteed to bloom -- how would you like it if the one thing in life you want to do is bloom and someone keeps cutting your bloom off -- given the opportunity to bloom, you certainly would. In your case it seems that through neglect the bulb has lost a lot of it's enery. If you leave it, it will continue to grow leaves and the bulb should get bigger. The bigger the bulb the bigger the bloom. If a flower stalk starts to appear you can decide to let it bloom or you can cut it and just let the bulb get bigger and healthier. I think the small size indicates that the bulb may not be up to blooming this time around. You can give it try, these bulbs are rather foolproof.

I transplanted tomatoes yesterday, too. :-) Alice, I used a clothes pin and propped up the lids on my flats. Can you do something like that? It seemed to be a happy medium. If they are the Jiffy Flats, I just clipped the clothespin to the top and let the two little legs of the clothespin rest of the side of the bottom of the flat. It works perfectly. I hope your outcome is better than the last time I had to leave my husband in charge of seedlings. Only one very drought tolerant tomato survived 10 days without water. :-) At least he remembered to feed the dogs (bless his heart!). Cheers, Michelle

my understading is the zygote is (normally) the smaller one, and the others would be the clones. although i dont think this is set in stone, and , i have heard competing theories, but , i think this one comes up more often and seems to have more weight.... here is some stuff from my files... ============================== The use of nucellar seedlings can increase the availability of rootstocks unlike zygotic seedlings. The polyembryonic seeds produce numerous nucellar seedlings, although distinguishing nucellar from zygotic seedlings has been a setback. At Pedro Sanchez (Snr) research nursery of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Makoka nursery, remarkable differences in mango seedling emergence and growth has been observed. The first or early seedling to emerge per seed has been taller and thicker than late emerging seedlings. It was assumed that most of the late emerging seedlings were nucellar since they were numerous. It is unlikely that a polyembryonic mango seed can produce as many zygotic seedlings as nucellar ones. According to Bally (2006), only twin or triplet zygotic seedlings can be produced from a single mango seed in rare cases. http://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajb/article/viewFile/78297/68664 ---------- The exact criterion for distinguishing a nucellar seedling from a gametic seedling in polyembronic varieties of mango is not yet well established. However, Sacgar and Chopra (1957) reported that in polyembryonic seed-stone the zygote usually gets degenerated and the seedling emerges from nucellar embryos alone. Thus there are chances of the sexual embryo development being crowded out by asexual ones in the early stages of embryo development. In that case the seedlings emerging will be all nucellar. However, this may not hold good for all varieties. Juliano (1937) reported that in ‘Pico’ both the types of embryo develop approximately at the same time and at the same speed. But in ‘Olour’, ‘Carabao’ and ‘Cambidiana’ the egg degenerates and all the embryos in a mature seed are adventive. Uniformity in the color of the emerging leaves of the seedlings may, however, be a a fair indication of their nuclear origin (Singh 1967). It has been observed that some of the monoembryonic varieties may revert to polyembryony when grown under different sets of soil and climatic conditions. Wester (1924) reported that some of the Indian varieties which were mostly monoembryonic produced more than one seedling in the Philippines. A similar condition was observed with some Indian varieties when grown under Puerto Rico conditions. This may be due to natural crossing of the monoembryonic with the polyembryonic varieties commonly grown in these regions. Sturrock (1951) reported that the hybrids of polyembryonic and monoembryonic types are polyembryonic under Florida (USA) conditions. However, further breeding studies are needed to ascertain the nature of inheritance of polyembryony in mango. Sometimes, seedlings with multiple shoots forming lateral branches arising in the axil of the cotyledonary leaves are mistaken for polyembryonic types. However, these can easily be distinguished as monoembryonic or polyembryonic on the basis of the number of tap roots. Single tap root will be a fair indication that it is monoembryonic, whereas more than one tap root with equal number of shoots will mean that the variety is polyembryonic (Singh 1960 http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in:8080/jspui/bitstream/10603/56178/5/05_chapter%201.pdf --------------------------------------------- Polyembryonic seeds contain more than one embryo and most of the embryos are genetically identical to the mother tree. https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mg216 ----------------- Poly-embryonic seeds produce a number of shoots, one of which originates from fertilisation. The fertilised seedling is often weak and stunted and should be discarded. The other seedlings are clones of the mother tree. https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/mangoes/propagating-mangoes ------------------- The True Polyembryonic answer. http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2192518/the-true-polyembryonic-answer