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  Re: [Aroid-l] Photos of Z. zamiifolia seeds
From: The Silent Seed <tylus.seklos at gmail.com> on 2019.10.23 at 14:29:06
This is awesome! I've never seen that - obviously - Did you happen to take pictures of the flowers?


On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 7:44 PM Walter Turner <wvturner@gmail.com> wrote:
On 4 April, way back in 2008, I asked in this forum whether anyone had photos of Z. zamiifolia seeds. No on ever answered, but in private correspondence with several forum members, I learned that no one knew of pictures.
Over the years since I wrote, I have tried pollinating the inflorescences. There is seldom visible pollen, so on the occasions when there is some, I have saved it in the freezing compartment of my refrigerator (not in a deep freeze). In 2018, I finally had seed. Twice. The first inflorescence was lost simply by being jarred when I moved the plant. The second, though, matured and produced three seeds. I was expecting seeds about the size and shape of olive pits, like the ones I had seen on aglaonema, but these were much bigger, rather like hazel nuts (2.76 MB photo, ZZ seeds.jpg).

I photographed the seeds and planted them in whatever commercial potting soil I had then on 28 December 2018. The pot was kept in my office, which is generally 21 or 22 =C2=B0C during the day and a few degrees cooler at night. On 28 March 2019, three months later to a day, I saw that one seed had sent up a shoot. Over the next few days, the others did so. The shoots didn=E2=80=99t look like much, but by 18 April the first had opened to give two leaflets (2.26 MB photo, ZZ seedling.jpg). These resembled what ZZ=E2=80=99s commonly send up from the roots.

On 7 October 2019, I separated the little plants into three pots. For photos, I removed nearly all the soil (
2.38 MB photo, ZZ plants with seeds-roots.jpg). ZZ surprised me again: the seeds were not being consumed to nourish the little plants, but appeared to be growing into tubers. Since I had a different kind of potting soil, I packed some of the old around the roots.

I hope my naivete comes through here. Maybe no one answered my query because everybody knew all about this and assumed someone else would tell me. Maybe my ZZ seeds aren=E2=80=99t becoming tubers, but are doing something I don=E2=80=99t know about. If anyone does find this interesting, the photos are free for all to use.

Walter Turner
Wuppertal, Germany

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--
The Silent Seed
Rare and Unusual plants from around the world.=C2=A0
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