Some other H Australis from Seed

I was just checking out Hoya 24's seedling thread and am so impressed with his great batch of Hoya Seedlings all growing in their little cups now. They look fabulous!!

I've posted in a couple of spots here and there that I too received a seed pod with my Hoya co-op order. That co-op order was my FIRST Hoya's other than what I had found full grown at HD along with a small order from Robs. I am mentioning this so you all will realize how totally new I am to Hoya's!! And all plants in general for that matter!

I actually tried to give my seed pod away here at DG two times but could find no takers! So when the seed pod burst open I took my zero lack of knowledge and dove in. I had just received an order from Park Seed with the set up you'll see that I used. I took tweezers and picked up 120 individual seeds and poked them into these dirt/foam pellets things. I watered off and on with Eleanors VF 11. I did not use the heat pad as it was summer and I had these upstairs where it gets fairly warm, but we are talking 5200 foot elevation in Idaho here! No way could they ever go outside as even during the warmest part of summer our night time temps regularly hit the low 40's and even upper 30's. Just giving some details on my growing conditions.

Most of mine (I believe I have 35 Australis seedlings that are big enough at this point) are now ready to make the move to their own little cups and I'm sure hoping I don't mess that up! I have slid some of the pellet things up and down in the Styrofoam and everything comes out nice and easy and there are nice white roots growing from the bottoms.

But the thing I am finding most perplexing is that I seem to have two different types of Hoya's growing?? The Hoya Australis seedlings popped up in about six days with some taking a little longer. But then I had some seedlings come up a good month or more afterwards. I had just assumed I had buried those particular seedlings too deep and they had to fight their way to the top but now they are getting bigger and they are different plants! There is no way anything else got into this set up as it was closed up nice and tight under the lights. And they do have thick hoya looking leaves, just completely different from the H Australis seedlings. Cross pollination of some type maybe??? Can seeds pods be like dogs and have different fathers for the same batch of pups? LOL

I took pictures regularly and because I'm a really anal type of gal :))) I'm going to start at the beginning of my little Hoya Baby journey here and walk you through via pictures from beginning to now. Just give me a minute or two to get the pictures all posted and then you'll see my "different" seedlings.

Now that you have my whole story I'd really appreciate any input on how you'd get two different plants from the exact same seed pod!!! I actually even have a stranger looking third entry too!

So I'm starting with a picture of the seed pod the day I received it, which was on June 6th and I'll move forward from there.

~Brenda

Here is the seed pod burst open on June 21th. This was 14 days after potting up my cuttings...

This message was edited Aug 29, 2007 9:23 AM

Here is the set up with the seeds all planted up on June 21th....

Here are some little seedlings starting to just pop up on June 28th...

Here they are growing along on the 10th of July...

Growing taller on July 17th....

A close up of the biggest seedling on July 17th

More growth on July 27th...

I went on vacation for over two weeks and so now here it is a full month since the last pictures were taken and they look great, to me anyway....

Here is my hand behind the biggest ones just for size reference...

Ok now I'll start showing the "different ones. Look in the front row of this picture. Nice tall H Australis seedlings and some little short clustered seedlings between....

Here is a close up of the biggest one I have right now of this 'different" seedling...

I have 9 of these different seedlings up and growing with a couple more still coming up such as this one...

Here is another close up with them growing right with the H Australis...

Now for the really weird one, with this one I just have to think that one of these little dirt/foam pellets wasn't sterile and had something in it already, what other explanation could there be??

Here's the weird one growing with the others...

One last picture of my odd balls....So does anyone have any ideas what I've got going here??

Thanks for being patient with all my pictures here! I don't have the best camera so the coloring on these is really not as yellow as some of them look.

~Brenda

This message was edited Aug 29, 2007 9:41 AM

Brenda, What a fabulous photo diary! I love it. Please keep posting on the progress. Your last photo has got to be some kind of weed seed. The others I believe are all australis, some of which are kind of stunted or slower growing than the others. Some of mine also looked like that at one point or another, but eventually all came to look nearly alike. I don't think that Hoya seed pods really work like different fathers, same mothers for puppies, but who knows I could be wrong.

Doug

Thank you Doug, I hadn't thought of maybe some stunted growth thing going on. They are just so different, even from the very smallest of the thinner leggier growing Australis seedlings. I'll be waiting to see and taking plenty of pictures. Believe it or not this is only about half of the ones I've taken so far. Different angels or time of day etc. LOL

~Brenda

Boy I thought I lived in at tough zone to grow plants in, but 3b, boy that is brutal! Can you even mature tomatoes or peppers in that zone?

I did cherry tomatoes in a pot on the back deck this year and I have actually picked and eaten some! I've tried different times and it usually cools off before I can get the little tomatoes to ripen so I'm thrilled this year. I have a friend that does garden here and with a green house to get everything going and lots and lots of work covering everything regularly at night she has a nice garden although she's still waiting on her peppers!!

I was walking the dogs last night and I was walking on some golden falling Aspen leaves already, our summers are too short!! Thus my new interest in house plants this past year, I need more green in my life. LOL

~Brenda

Really good photo diary, Brenda...well done!!!

That rogue seedling looks like Cilantro!!! Heck, grow it out and let's see where it takes you! The H. australis where I cut the cuttings is growing with H. sp. Tanna Island and H. anulata...but none of the different looking cuttings look like they are THAT much different. The later seedling could have been buried deeper...or could have had something in the pellet impeding their development... It will be hard to see any REAL differences until they grow up a bit more... I would be sure to grow the strange ones out!!! Or send them to me and I will grow them out...put them on a tree and see what happens.

Nice work,
Carol

Cilantro! LOL

I will be definitely growing all of these out and seeing where they take me, I've come this far and it's been a ball! And I'll certainly continue taking pictures along the way. I'll let you all know how they continue to develop. :)))

~Brenda

Brenda, thanks for posting this, it is really fascinating! I can't wait to see what these plants turn out to be. If the father were another species or just a very different form of australis, there would be a lot of variation in the seedlings, so maybe that is what happened.

Brenda I just loved reading about your experience with growing the australis seeds. Please continue this series as they grow.

Doug brought up an interesting question regarding the possibility of "different fathers, same mother" for a seed pod. The way I understand the pollination process I believe this can happen, especially in a plant that relies on insect pollinators. Individual pollen grains provide the sperm cells which eventually unite with eggs in the ovary, and each union produces a single seed. Flower pods that contain multiple seeds could have more than one source of pollen if the bee or moth visited a variety of compatible flowers.

OK, now feel free to chime in and correct me if I am misinformed

Edited to add

Are hoyas like orchids in the way they are pollinated? If that is the case then the "multiple father" scenario is unlikely. Does anyone know?
.


This message was edited Aug 29, 2007 6:21 PM

What a good hoya Mom you are, and what a really great Diary. Please do keep us posted.

Brenda, have you noticed any variation on how hairy the seedlings are? The stocky ones look to be pretty hairy. That can vary a lot in australis.

Sofi the way you explained it is what I was thinking but I have no idea if that's possible???

Thank you Tami! I'm going to keep trying here...

markroy all of these seedlings are just as smooth as can be, any "hair" showing in the pictures is the dandelion fluff stuff that was around the seeds themselves.

So I did some rearranging with these babies yesterday, deciding which ones I shall pot up into their own containers and which ones will need to keep growing awhile longer. So more pictures...

First picture here is of the mother plant (which was just cuttings on June 6th) that I got the seed pod from. It has sent out new growth at the end of the stem with the peduncle on it (yippee!) and some new growth from a cutting right out of the pot. There is another stem starting up behind one of the big original leaves too, so I'm thrilled! I lost several of the leaves that has been attached to the cuttings and figured the whole thing would be a bust but now new growth appearing!!!! As you can tell by any and all of these pictures I'm just flying by the seat of my pants with the way I do things but so far I'm happy...

~Brenda

This message was edited Aug 31, 2007 8:12 PM

Here are some of the seedlings that I was transferring from one stryofoam set up to another, I loved the roots!!

Here is the bottom of the styrofoam set up with roots that had grown out of it from the bigger seedlings...

Here is one of the foam / peat pellet things that I tore into as no plant had ever developed in it, which was the case with more than half of them. You can see that it started to develop but then just never did progress with this one. Most of the others with nothing growing from them just had a husk of a seed left in them...

Now here is the bunch that I have left to grow longer. It includes 4 of the smallest but recognizeable Australis seedlings, 11 of the short squaty guys, 5 that I can see something trying to grow out of but nothing at the top yet and the 1 wierdo weed thing...

Today's project is to now plant up the 30 seedlings that I think are ready for their own quarters. I will be leaving them in the same spot under the same grow light that they have grown in up to this point but each will just have his own little cup and will they will not be domed. I have been opening the domes and trying to acclimate them to the regular air in my house for a couple of weeks now. I am going to leave them in those foamy peat pellet things they have grown in and just poke that down into some hoya mix. I may try to tear that stuff away from one or two but.............well we shall see............

One last picture for today. The little stem of new growth coming up in the mother hoya pot. I'm a simple person that gets a lot of joy from simple sights like this!

~Brenda

This message was edited Aug 31, 2007 2:00 PM

Brenda...I don't know the material you grew them in, but if it is 'foamy' and keeps moisture clinging to the roots...I would take as much off as you can....soak it off?

Brenda, after seeing the root systems that your seedlings have I think I will have to give that styrofoam setup a try this winter. Great pictures, and thanks for including the picture of the stunted one.

I had something weird come up like your single unknown, and it turned out to be a fern.

Louise

Just poppin' in over here, Brenda, to see how these babies are doing. :o) I love all your pictures! The whole process is fascinating! :o)

I have potted up some of the seedlings now. I did something smart (I usually don't :)) think ahead far enough) when I started the potting up. I decided to mainly just pot up the ones that were touching the top of the dome and to leave the others be for awhile so that I can see how it goes with this first batch.

I have since learned that the medium I used is called bio sponges and are some revolutionary new thing out of Europe for seed starting...here is a link for any who are interested in both the bio domes and the bio sponges http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?storeId=10101&catalogId=10101&langId=-1&mainPage=prod2working&ItemId=6529&PrevMainPage=gatepage&scChannel=Gate%20biodome&OfferCode=TH1

Carol had mentioned trying to remove the seedling from the sponge but it was impossible to do as the roots were so entwined. After tearing some roots off i decided I'd just have to go for it and plant the whole thing as is. Sorry for the llack of quality on the next couple of pictures but you'll see the roots all entwined which was the point of the shots.

~Brenda

Another view of the entwined roots...

I decided to do some in clear plastic cups so that I could watch root development (thanks for that idea Rain!) I put perlite in the bottom of some and I did one with the hydroponic clay pellets in the bottom and added a hoya mix I put together and then planted the seedlings sponge and all. They had nice roots extending from the sponges so I'm hoping that these will take hold....

I also decided to try some hydroponicly (sp?) and had these little baskets and some small clay pellets on hand for that purpose. I am reasoning on the fact that these seedlings have been growing some what hyrdoponicly in the bi domes once their roots came out of the bio sponge and grew in the water underneath.....