About Arisaema sikokianum

[Donna Maroni]

Susan Cox suggested:

> There are other questions not answered, such as why Donna's giant
> plant never gets smaller after producing seed.  A few questions come
> up like, is it possible that Donna's sikokianum is a hybrid of any
> kind,

Nothing about it suggests that it is a hybrid.  I got the seeds from Parks
Seed years ago, so there is no way of knowing if there was the possibility
of hybridization.

> or is it because it stayed female rather than reverting back to
> male as they can do in the wild as well as in pot culture in Japan.

It has bloomed every year for many years now.  Does that tell you
anything?

> Donna, you might dig that sikokianum up just to see if the mother
> plant produced bulbils also, or if maybe fertile seed germinated next
> to it.

I doubt that I could bring myself to mess with success.  As long as my
plants remain happy and healthy, I'm disinclined to dig them up out of
curiosity about the answers to questions such as these. But, the
probability that a fertile seed germinated next to a plant is pretty close
to zero since I usually pull the seed heads when they are just beginning
to turn color and ripen them indoors (they never ripen before winter sets
in here).

I had another look at the plant that I think produced offsets (not the
gigantic one), and it sure seems like that the multiple blooms belong to
offsets-the three stems are all crowded together--doesn't seem that
seed-derived plants would come up so close to the mother plant.
Furthermore, judging by size, none of these are seedlings--all three
blossoms are of substantial size, i.e., nowhere near as small as the
blossoms on plants that are blooming for the first time.  All three have
set seeds.

Donna