Saturday, September 21, 2013

Strange thing about Avonia

My Avonia quinaria ssp. alstonii continues to surprise. Now explain this to me. From what I read everywhere Avonia quinaria is the only Anacampseros species that is not self-fertile hence needs a genetically different partner to develop seeds. Today I noticed three out of its flowers, now dried up, were still attached to the plant. Normally they drop very soon after they close, just as the other flowers did. Since I normally remove old rests of flowers or old leaves from my plants I pulled on them and felt they weren't exactly soft. It turns out there are seed pods with seeds inside. And most of them have a nice viable size and shape. How did this happen? It was flowering all alone.

 I remember Bob Stewart warned me once that these girls are trouble XD

3 comments:

  1. how about the seeds now? did they become new plants?

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  2. I'm also curious if you ever sowed these seeds and had any outcome. I love your blog. Just found it as a result of someone's Facebook recommendation.

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  3. Thank you very much for visiting :)

    Yes, I sowed these seeds and they all eagerly germinated. Unfortunately I've killed them a couple of months later. I still need to figure out how to successfully grow Avonia from seed. Will practice more this year :)

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