*************
"Our nursery manager had just told me the infructescence had collapsed, so I
decided it was time to sample a fruit. Since then, we sent out a press
release and the news media have begun to swarm again-must be a slow news
week, although we have been getting calls all along from interested folks
wanting to know if we got any seed, but it was too soon to tell for sure
until last week. We'd suspected some success, as some of the fruit within
John's pollination tags were obviously plumper than the others. Don't be
deceived by those pictures I sent you, most of that fruit is empty. So far
we've harvested seven seed, some are fat and darker, some skinnier and pale,
but we're planting it all. Yes, we use bottom heat for many of our seeds
anyway, so these have been sown over the heat in the prop house. There are
still some plump unharvested fruits, we're doing them one by one as the media
inquiries continue. We also unpotted and washed the tuber today too and will
weigh it this afternoon. We didn't weigh it when we first got it but Theresa
(the nursery manager) estimated it at 45 pounds, based on her own lifting
capacity.
To do the pollination, we harvested some of the anthers after the spathe
started to open in the evening, we knew the females would quickly become
receptive. John took them home that night and put them in a plastic bag with
a rotting apple (for the ethylene gas) and placed it on the surface of his
gas stove (for the warmth from the pilot light). The idea was to hasten
pollen maturation. He later extracted the pollen with dissecting tools and
put it on the stgmas. This was done at three different times. He has a
written record of everything he did including the chronology, I've got it
somewhere. Anyway, as you suggest, we can write this up for Aroideana
sometime. In the meantime go ahead and post any of this info on the aroid
listserver if you want."
*************************
I don't know if I will be allowed to post an attached image to this newslist,
but if one of the moderators will contact me I can see about getting that
picture out to you somehow. The infructescence was pretty impressive. I don't
know if Huntington will be posting something on their web site about this
soon, but you can check at: www.huntington.org
Has anyone ever been successful at selfing this species before? I am very
curious about the techniques they used and I wonder if this has been
attempted for any Araceae.
Thought the group might like to hear about this. I found it fascinating that
something like this would work.
Donna Atwood
Selby Gardens
selbyhort@aol.com
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