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hardy  Aroids)" <ARISAEMA-L at NIC.SURFNET.NL> Aroids)" <ARISAEMA-L at NIC.SURFNET.NL>
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From: Gusman Guy <ggusman at ULB.AC.BE>
Subject: Re: Arisaema dilatatum germination quandry

>Hello all, and Guy in particular.   This particular batch of seed that
>Bonaventure is referring to was shared between us. It had come from the =same
>seedhead on the same plant grown in Europe.    He tried to grow his on p=aper
>towels per  Deno.  Mine were refrigerated for two weeks at 40-45 F., bef=ore
>being panted in a  bark mixture for seedlings. I plan to wait another 2
>weeks before digging them up to look at them.  Having consulted THE BOOK
>first, I have not expected to see anything above the surface--but the
>question sits there like an elephant in the room--How was it learned tha=t
>these things do not show above ground the first year.  Was it an impatie=nt
>botanist who discovered it by accident, like Fleming learning about
>penicillin?

Hello all,
The first time I saw this kind of germination mentioned in the literature=was in Mitsuru Hotta's paper "On the juvenile plants of the genus Arisae=ma", Acta Phytotax. Geobot. 21: 9-16 (1964). There is a drawing of a seed=ling of A. thunbergii, in a bladeless state (page 10, fig. 1D). In this p=aper - mostly in Japanese -, Hotta tried to relate the juvenile blade to =the adult blade. Nowadays, one knows it doesn't work. He was probably the=first to mention this behavior and write that it occurs in "A. thunbergi=i group".
Later, in his famous paper, "An Attempt at an Infrageneric Classification=of the Genus Arisaema (Araceae)",  J. Fac Sc. Univ. Tokyo sect. 3, 13: 4=31-482 (1984), Jin Murata uses the morphology of the first leaf as a taxo=nomic character. He also published a photo of a seedling of Arisaema negi=shii (page 446, fig. 11G) showing a protocorm (tuberlet) produced "some d=istance away from the seed" as Bonaventure says. No aerial blade follows =immediately the germination and Murata writes "The foliage leaf is produc=ed for the first time in the second year".
Guy Gusman