[pbs] Alstroemeria philippiana on wiki
Roy M. Sachs
rmsachs at ucdavis.edu
Mon May 10 17:18:12 EDT 2004
>I have just added a picture of Alstroemeria philippiana to the wiki:
>http://www.ibiblio.org/pbs/pbswiki/index.php/Alstroemeria
>
>I sowed 114 seeds of F & W 10575 last December in my warm dining
>room, and they surprised me by germinating in nine days. They grew
>fast, sending long shoots along the window sill. They are each over
>a metre long, and one has a single flower at the very end, 19 weeks
>from germination, 20 weeks from sowing.
>
>Only a quarter to a third of the seeds seem to have germinated. The
>whole lot are in a single pot. I moved them up to bigger pots a
>couple of times, expecting to separate them after they went dormant,
>but I never expected such speedy growth.
>
>This is a desert plant, primed to grow fast as soon as it gets
>rained on, which is a rare occurrence in its home - Atacama/Coquimbo
>area, Coastal Semi-Mediterranean Desert Zone.
>
>A lot of its leaves are drying. I wonder what it will do after
>ripening its seed. On the desert, would it die back, leaving its
>rhizomes waiting years for the next rainfall? Or does it act
>essentially as an annual?
When I grew A. philippiana it behaved as a perennial (in the
greenhouse), but I was not able to divide the rhizome mass and clone
the species.
Roy
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