Plant Propagation
One of my newly hybridized seedlings opening a first flower. This is DS Africa x Moscow Lady and at 8 cm and still opening, it is a very promising flower! I love the throat. Now to observe it for 3 generations to see if it's stable, or drops flowers, or proves difficult to propagate, etc before I can decide if I want to name and register it. I also have a lot more seedlings from this same cross yet to open so one of them may be better still.
Fading flowers on a pink, peach, and yellow streaked NOID show a seed pod forming after I self pollinated it. with it's lovely variegated foliage I'd love to be able to produce flowers with even stronger yellow, if possible. This one also sports nice green edging to some of the petals. It can easily take 6 months or more for the seed pods to ripen.
The African Violet mini 'EK Before the Storm' is a double flower shown here forming a seed pod after cross pollination with Rebel's Splatter Kake. Double flowers in gesneriads often have some or all of their reproductive parts morphed into additional petals so it may take a sharp eye to watch out for pollen or stigmas.
Sinningia tubaflora depotted and the tall single stem cut up. The cuttings can be rooted to produce more plants. The tuber was cut in half, each with growing 'eye's showing buds and sealed with super glue before repotting. The under ground leads were left to hang out and bagged. Later once they greened up, I also cut them off to make /more/ cuttings to root. Very quickly it is possible to go from one tuber and one growing lead to more than a dozen plants.
An episcia berry collected on 6-15-17 from my 'Looking Glass' and pollinated by 'Red Gator'. I will smear the berry over a paper plate and allow to dry before I separate out the tiny black seeds. Some I will sow and the rest I will store at about 5 to 8 % humidity in my refrigerator for later use or to share.
If you join the Gesneriad Society, they send new members a small seed packet for free. It is mixed species and hybrid seed which I sprinkled over damp soil in a 3 oz solo cup on 5-7-17. Sealed into a baggie, I set it beneath my lights. Shown here a week later germinating. Seedlings start out much less than the size of pinheads.
For each kind of plant I hybridize, I also collect and bank pollen. It is put into empty gel capsules, allowed to dry before closing up. Each is numbered. They correlate to numbers on an index card that lists the name of the plant and the date it was collected. Here African Violet pollen is shown. Various kinds of pollen, if stored at low humidity, may be refrigerated or frozen for months or even years at a time for later use, just like banking seed.
Ripening seed pod on a hand pollinated African Violet, Rebel's Splatter Kake. For AV's it can easily take 6 months (give or take some months) for seeds to be ready to harvest. You must not cut this stem after the flowers fade. I have the back of the stem or sepal marked with a dot of bright colored paint that matches the tag added to the pot that tells me what the cross was and the date.
Streptocarpus seed freshly germinating on potting soil and perlite mix. The damp, sterilized mix is sealed in a dome, deli salad container, or bagged. These half mm seedlings are shown here at 1 week of age. They grow rapidly and will grow even faster if they are redistributed every few weeks to keep spacing them out.
Streptocarpus seed pods collected and dried on a paper plate. Small pods at the bottom have been untwisted to drop their seed onto parchment paper, ready for germination or storage. I like to sow a small amount of the seed and bank the rest in my refrigerator for future use. You can get a good sense of whether a hybrid cross is worth your time and effort by growing out only 20 to 50 seedlings at most. A single seed pod may contain anywhere from hundreds or even thousands of seed.
Before I had lighted shelving racks I used to start African Violet and Streptocarpus leaves in natural window light. Each in their own sealed baggy was affixed to string and hung in east or north facing windows. This did not prove to be sufficient light and my propagation rates were only around 50% or less. Under artificial lighting with a duration of 12 hours a day, I now achieve very nearly 100% propagation from leaves. This photo was published in a 2015 issue of the Gesneriad Society.
Putting up new shelving and spreading plants. Additional space allows me to separate out stock plants from propagation shelving, and quarantine spaces - all with their own lighting systems suited to the kind of plants growing. T5's for streps, T8's for everything else. Lights are on timers and plants are self watering on gridded wicking trays, or are sealed up in bags or domes so not to require constant attention. I can easily leave for weeks at a time if necessary.
Here is one of my plant stands for babies! These are mostly grown from leaves but a few from seed, be they primulinas, African violets, streptocarpus, etc. I find if they aren't too wet they can be sealed up in baggies for months and grow very well in isolation with a dash of cinnamon to help evade dampening off. Using sterile soil is also very helpful. I mix my own and bake it in the oven.
Some of my personal stock plants showing a mix of streptocarpus. On the fringes where the light is less bright are a few of my African violets. Some of them were overdue for repotting. The yellowed streptocarpus at right had developed root mealies which turned out to be easy to get rid of with aggressive repotting and malathion soak. I use these stock plants to take leaf cuttings and for hybridizing.
African Violet 'Ma's Waterfall' shown here making leaf babies! I cut up large leaves at least in half, or even in thirds and plant /all/ of the pieces, cut vein sides downwards. All pieces of good health and decent size can and will produce baby plants if kept damp (not wet) and under bright light for at least 8 hours a day. Window light is usually insufficient for many cultivars so propagation is significantly improved under artificial lighting.
African Violet 'Rebel's Splatter Kake' baby growing off of the mother leaf and large enough to separate. As you can see here, this is a leaf cut in half with only the top planted in this cup. The 3 oz solo cup has been kept damp (not wet) and sealed in a ziplock baggie, hung under the edge of a lighted shelf to conserve space.
African Violet 'Rob's Macho Devil' baby grown from a variegated mother leaf. To get more green in the leaves before separateion from the mother leaf, water wiith epsom salts at a ratio of 1 tablespoon per gallon and move the leaf pot to a warmer location. Cool temperatures produce more variegation than warm summer temps.
Streptocarpus baby plants being taken off of the adult leaf and potting up. I tend to find that African Violets babies grow best when started in 3 oz solo cups or small salad containers that are completely sealed and very humid. But streptocparus leaves actually produce much larger, healthier babies faster in domed flats. So now I only repot them on into the 3 oz cups once they are larger than even shown here.
Episcias grown from leaves - slower than growing from stolens but a great way to produce many more plants faster. The pink chimeric leaves do not reliably produce pink chimeric babies but I did get some - I was more interested in seeing what the original non-chimeric parent plants were. I did get a pink chimeric surprise out of a Chocolate Soldier leaf.
Newly sprouting adenium seedlings are not fragile but they are highly toxic. Gloves should be worn, or in this case, I use 'Gloves in a Bottle' a liquid skin protector.
Newly germinating adenium seeds being transferred to a flat to be grown on before repotting to individual cups.
Germinated adenium obesum and arabicum seedlings transplanted to 3 oz solo cups for growing on. The cups have small holes melted in the bottoms. After a few days in the dappled shade they were moved to full sun with a shade cloth and then slowly acclimated to intense sunlight.
Corytoplectus cutucuensis seedlings on April 16th, ready to transplant. Planted on March 24th. This is an endangered and very beautiful gesneriad from the mountains of Eastern Ecuador.
Corytoplectus cutucuensis seedlings transferred to flat tray using pointy kabob skewers like chop sticks. Shown here April 16th, 2016.
Corytoplectus cutucuensis seedlings ready for transplanting into individual 3 oz solo cups using kabob skewers like chopsticks. See my Corytoplectus idea book for more photos and information on step by step propagation of this wonderful species.
An endangered Corytoplectus cutucuensis grown from seed in 2016, shown here by December ready to repot. Having been both wicked and kept domed under high humidity, roots reached out of the soil and into the air. This species will grow fine out on the shelf if wicked but achieved faster growth when domed while small. You can see the first orange-red calyx forming as it prepares to flower.
Here DS Africa at left and an unnamed seedling blooming to the right (DS Africa x Nissan X-Trail). This seedling in my hybridier's opinion is probably not worth keeping. But you can see that DS Africa has STRONG traits as a mother plant. It is however woefully difficult to propagate by leaves and slow growing.
Q