colchisine project

Some time ago I had a gout attack and the Dr. prescribed .5 mg of colchisine.
After about 3 days I could walk normal again, and I saved one tablet of colchisine. I did the math and figured out that one tablet at .5 mg, dissolved in one ounce of water is relatively close to 200 parts per million. It is only effective in low concentrations. It has a very interesting characteristic, in that it can stop the cell walls from forming during cell division. Because of this characteristic, certain tissue culture labs across the country have used it to induce polyploidy in, invitro tissue culture for plant breeders. This means that an Iris breeder, who has come up a super normal flower, can possibly turn it into a giant super flower, and a chance at a coveted medal. Colchsine (sp?) can also be carcinogenic if you get on your skin. It is therefore strictly controlled.

To have a little fun, I made an oz of 200 ppm solution, and placed 3 drops of it in the base of the throat of several freshly opened shibori tye dyed I.purpureas.
Man did I get excited. The seed pods with their tags got visibly larger than the other seed pods. When it came time for seed harvest I carefully separated them and dried them.

Out of three 2 gallon pots of this variety, I got about 350 seeds. I weighed the seeds of the normal seeds, and then I weighed the slightly larger colchisine treated seeds. You couldn't guess what I found .

The normal seeds WEIGHED 40 TIMES what the treated seeds weighed.
What does this mean.?........ I think it means that the treated flowers produced seed coats only , with no embryos. I am excited, because how else could you come up with the weight ratio of embryo to seed coat. ? Now I know it is 1/40 of the seed weight, and without any scientific information from other sources, I can use this information in future experiments.

Oh my! Frank you are so interesting to read! That's really amazing that you thought to do something like that. So my seeds coatings only weigh 1/40 of the entire seed weight? That's really cool! Is this Botany 101? :-)

Frank,
That is very interesting and sounds like you really keep great records too, I wonder if the seedcoat is any harder than the others?

I want to try some with calcium pills, (got the pill idea from you), have you tried any calcium? I read a report on this but have to find it again in the world wide web, if I can find it again, i'll post the link. The Dr/Professor, she did not give her results there on that page, I think you have to be a member or something like that to get in their system. This has been on my mind for almost a year.

Anyway, it left me wondering what happened?

George had a gout attack a few years ago, too. WOW!!! was it painful, they had to give him morphine.