Arisaema seed germination

[George R Stilwell, Jr.]

"To each his own", said the old woman as she kissed the cow.

Obviously the Deno Method (paper towels) is not for everyone. A
commercial grower would
go mad trying to keep tabs on the radicle emergence and keeping them from
growing into the paper.

On the other hand, it works very well for those who start 5 of this and 5
of that and are more than
happy to keep tabs on the plants. Transplanting the seed with radicle
extended is the tricky part.
It needs to be done immediately as the radicle shows, and carefully.
That's where agar can be helpful.

Of course, if you're going to mess around with agar, I wonder why not
start them in the
agar in the first place? Once I learned to do the transplant earlier
rather than later, transplant losses
went to practically zero.

For a full discussion and step-by-step, either get the document listed in
my last post or
go to <http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/arisaema-l.html>, the
Arisaema-L archives and search for it.

For those interested in a method used by commercial growers, see Ellen
Hornig's treatise on the
subject on the IAS web page <http://hoya.mobot.org/ias/> (press the
"Horticulture" button,
click on "Arisaema Seed Germination").

It was said, at the recent NARGS WSW meeting, that Ellen
grows Arisaema like potatoes. I might add, like baking potatoes. There
was one of her A. fargesii
in the silent auction. It had to be well over 5" across.

Ray
<GRSJr at Juno.com>

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