Byblis liniflora

[cindy]

Last night, I bleached another batch of seeds.

The Process
Video Clip: Byblis liniflora seeds

Seeds in diluted bleach solution (10 parts water: 1 part bleach)




The seedlings from Batch 1

[khairimhd]

Cindy, If you don't mind may I know how long to bleach the seeds?

[David]

Cindy, thanks for the pictures and video clip. Makes the whole process so much more interesting than it already is. Nice pictures man. You can see the outer black layer of the seeds eroding in the bleach water.

Khairi, what I do is I wait until the seeds turn white colour.

[tarence]

I`ve actually tried twice....once was fresh seeds. It didn`t work at all. Zilch germination.

2nd time, put in the fridge for one week, then bleached them. Only 1 germination.

It seems after taking out from the fridge, gotta wait for a day or 2.

Cindy , any fridge time involved for yours ? I currently just sow the seeds w/out bleaching coz the germination rate is higher. Heheh.

[cindy]

khairimhd, like David said...until the seeds turn white. I am more careful, checking every hour. This time it took about 6 hours. After that, I rinse the seeds several times and soak them in clean water overnight before sowing.

With fresh seeds, I thought germination was zilch too! I automatically assumed that no germination after a week means a gone case. Then I was happilly misting my Nep seed box...Four Byblis seedlings!!

The second batch, which is featured in the video clip, was refridgerated for about 2 weeks plus.

Tarence, are you sowing fresh seeds or after the refridgeration? Fresh seeds can work but it can take months! I occasionally find Byblis popping up in Nep pots which were near a pot of Byblis like 6 months ago.

[tarence]

Cindy, i am sowing fresh seeds after bleaching, also seeds refrigerated 1 week then bleached, fresh seeds without bleaching...all sort of combinations. Very minimal success unlike the almost 90% success rate some folks are getting.

[cindy]

Tarence, how are growing your plants? Under direct sunlight? Do you pollinate the flowers or you leave them to self pollinate?

I, for one, have never gotten even 10% germination let alone 90%!

[tarence]

i grow the adult plants under direct sunlight. i let the flowers self pollinate.

could some seeds be formed without any germinating capabilities i.e. barren seeds ?

the 90% success rate was from bleached seeds by Jonathan i believe.

[lisham]

hmmmm.... byblis... liniflora.... I need bigger death rack(s) for my CPs other than neps...

[cindy]

Tarence, I am not sure if the seeds can be infertile...I have got seeds that are still as fresh after being sowed for 2 months. Pinched them and out popped the nice round seed.

Unless, the round thing is just the endosperm and the seed embryo is absent!

[tarence]

I will nevertheless keep trying to germinate byblis from whatever method. Heheh, I want my Byblis forest ! so far, only got 1 flowering & seeding adult ( sold one off ) and a small kuci rat seedling.

But many many seeds to try & try again.

[David]

Just to share my experiene. Germination rate is low for me too. Even after using bleach, I'll only get about 5 plantlets out of about 50 seeds. But at least better than before... ie. zero germination.

I've had a pot of seeds that were sown more than a month. These were just sown without dipping them in bleach solution. So happen I did not have any seeds from my plant at that time and my hands were itching to sow some seeds (my weekly dose of sowing seeds). So I use a twizer and pick the seeds from the media. Put them in bleach solution until the seeds are white in colour and sow them again. After 2 weeks... waalaa!!! I've got a few germination. Kinda cool. I thought the seeds were a gonner after more than a month.

Still figuring out how jonathan have 90% germination.

[tarence]

I got some funny results. I sowed some unbleached fresh seeds onto LFS....it was put in a covered plastic see thru container with low water level and 1 hour morning sun. That was 12 days ago.....today i saw 1 pot actually having 4 germination. I`m not kidding.....the other pot is still growth-less. I used to get crummy results before this too.

Is it the heat ?

Is it the high humidity levels ?

Is it the fresh seeds ?

my Nikon doesn`t alllow me to take good close-ups like Cindy`s pic so I can`t show it well.

[David]

This plant is unpridictable. Sometimes I wish they (the plants) would just speak english and tell me exactly what they want!

[cindy]

I agree with you, David. Now I am trying to get seeds without helping the pollination. After that I'll go through the whole process again and see if I will get better results.

The batch shown in the pics above has no germination yet. It has been 8 days!

[tarence]

Hate the germination process, love the CP. heheh.

[David]

If only we can propagate byblis through leaf cutting. Hmm... Maybe I'll try and see since I heard that someone has tried leaf cutting on D. burmanii that is known not to grow from leaf cutting, and came out successful. If this can be done, it'll save us all the problem.

Maybe I should try stem cutting too and see if it roots. I realised they grow extra growing point as they get older. Maybe I can try cut one plant up like how I would treat a nepenthes vine.

[tarence]

I`ll try too today and then we can compare notes.

[cactustts]

Sure you can get a new plant from stem cutting, David. My plant once eaten up by snail, the stem broke into two, I took the broken stem and inserted into the sphagnum moss within the same pot, now I have a new plant with two growing points and the broken mother plant grew another two shoots too ;D

[David]

Ah hah! There you go. Thanks TS.

I think I'll do stem cuttings then. From one plant I can maybe get 3-4 if I cut it up. Hmm, this can be another sollution when the plant vine too long and start to fall over... CUT it OFF!

Okie Tarance! I'll do some leaf cuttings on my biblis and we can compare notes.

Cool! Don have to depend entirely on seed germination for new plants... haa, haa, haa...