International Aroid Society

Dear Walter,

Peter and I just shared reading your observations on ZZ. It is very interesting. If you are interested, please oin us in the next IAS conference at Munich.

More information in the link below.

https://xiiiiac.wixsite.com/xiiiiac

Best wishes,

Sin Yeng and Peter

Sent from my Huawei phone

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] Photos of Z. zamiifolia seeds
From: Tom Croat
To: Discussion of aroids
CC:

Dear Walter: Your suggestion was a good one and when I Googled the word I instantly got all kinds of information o the train complete with wonderful images of the train in motion. What I had done and frequently do is to use Google Earth to look at the town from above. It is wonderful since you can see the vegetation streets houses, etc. Often when I get a person=E2=80=99s address I go there to see where his house is located and what it looks like. That is great if you are traveling there for the first time. I do it also for finding hotels, hostels, Airbnb locations etc. For example if you type in my address 5600 Hilview Dr. , Pacific, Missouri it will show you my property which is located 50 km SW of the Missouri Botanical Garden where I work.

It=E2=80=99s nice to know that you live also in Bavaria.

Tom

From: aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com <aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com> On Behalf Of Walter Turner
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2019 2:50 PM
To: Discussion of aroids <aroid-l@www.gizmoworks.com>
Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] Photos of Z. zamiifolia seeds

I shouldn=E2=80=99t have thought you could google Wuppertal without getting countless pictures of the schwebebahn. Google "wuppertal" with the quotes to keep from getting the city government=E2=80=99s site. Then choose the images. The city itself is crowded along the bottom of the valley. You can=E2=80=99t walk far from the river without being in a park.
I also lived in southern Germany for a long time after I first came here. I worked near Freising, which is near Munich, from 1979 till 1993. I lived on a farm several miles from town and traveled by bicycle, rain or snow, and in retrospect it seems always to have been one or the other of those. I visited Munich on my first weekend and knew immediately it was my home. Then work brought me here. It took some getting used to, but now I love it.

On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 7:59 PM Tom Croat <Thomas.Croat@mobot.org> wrote:

Dear Walter:

I realize that what you explained was short and to the point and that you then assume that since you mentioned this in a post that it is =E2=80=9Cold=E2=80=9D news but I can assure you that most people in the botanical community will not have read your notes. I am hoping that you could just retrieve your messages, assemble them into order and include the pictures. It really is worthy of a short publication and I can help you assemble it for our Newsletter. If you don=E2=80=99t have time to do that just capture all your notes and the images and send them to me. I can put them into order and send it back to you for your approval. Science loses a lot of information simply because little bits of information are considered unimportant and often never get recorded. I don=E2=80=99t trust that information dispensed by social media will ever be cataloged and recorded.

Wuppert

Wuppertal looks wonderful on Google Earth. I especially liked the nice wooded areas around the city and the big park where there is a museum. I did not see the suspended train though. I must have looked in sufficient detail because I am sure that it would show up. Does it go anywhere near that big park?

I was always amazed when I was in Germany how many smallish towns once sees on a single road. When I was in Bavaria I would ride out into the country from Ansbach where I was attending the US Army Signal School-Europe on the weekend on a rented bicycle. As a farm boy it was interesting to see how different your methods of agriculture where. In those days in the little towns the farmer lived in a building above his cows. The manure was in front and in the spring the fluid manure was carried quite appropriately the field and spread on the soil.

This year we rented a car and covered 3600 km all over southern France. I need to do the same sometime in Germany. Perhaps I will be able finally to visit your fine valley! This year in September I visited a part of Germany not so distant from you. Hanover, Bielefeld, Stuckenbrock and Paderborn. I traveled overnight on a train from Copenhagen to Hamburg because the airline baggage handlers in Copenhagen were on strike. I went there to give lectures for an aroid sales event sponsored by Ecuagenera.

All the best,

Tom

From: aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com <aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com> On Behalf Of Walter Turner
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2019 9:16 AM
To: Discussion of aroids <aroid-l@www.gizmoworks.com>
Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] Photos of Z. zamiifolia seeds

Hello, Tom.
I know to appreciate a positive comment from you.
First, Wuppertal is some 25 miles NNE of Cologne. With some 350,000 people, it is probably Germany=E2=80=99s largest city that no one has ever heard of. That=E2=80=99s probably because this is the most highly populated area of Europe and even a city of this size is lost. People who do know about Wuppertal know it for its suspension railway, the schwebebahn. That line runs about ten miles through the Wupper valley, for most of the stretch hanging above the river. Which would be called a creek in the US.
As to publication, I don=E2=80=99t think I could add to what I wrote. That was all I know about the ZZ seeds. I have a lot of pictures, but the ones I posted are the best and most illustrative. I spent my working life as a chemist, and I have a number of publications to my name. My friends are teasing me about this latest one, without co-authors or peer review.
Walter

On Fri, Oct 25, 2019 at 1:35 AM Tom Croat <Thomas.Croat@mobot.org> wrote:

Dear Walter: I am sorry that I missed your original query but want to say that this is a wonderful story and really one that deserves being published, if not in Aroideana than in the IAS Newsletter. Could you write up an article about this experience with images of your subject matter. Perhaps your article would lead to others doing the sort of detailed sleuthing that you did with Zamioculcus. If you chose to write the article I would be happy to help you in any way that I can. Please tell me where is Wuppertal? I am always interested in the location of German cities since I served in the army in 1957=E2=80=931959 in southern Germany and have traveled there quite a few times as well for other reasons.

All the best,

Tom

From: aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com <aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com> On Behalf Of The Silent Seed
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2019 9:50 AM
To: Discussion of aroids <aroid-l@www.gizmoworks.com>
Subject: Re: [Aroid-l] Photos of Z. zamiifolia seeds

This is fascinating stuff, to me, anyway. It's too bad that almost nobody is on here any longer. I wonder why.

Speaking along the lines of flowers, I noticed my Aglaonema "Chocolate" are flowering and the flowers are yellow. What a surprise that was. Nice change from the usual white.

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 10:47 AM Emily Colletti <Emily.Colletti@mobot.org> wrote:

Thank you for sharing.

Emily Colletti Horticulturist Research/Aroid collections Missouri Botanical Garden 4344 Shaw Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63110 314-577-9473 ext. 77145

From: aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com [mailto:aroid-l-bounces@www.gizmoworks.com] On Behalf Of Walter Turner
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2019 1:26 PM
To: Discussion of aroids
Subject: [Aroid-l] Photos of Z. zamiifolia seeds

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.

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