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Myrmecodia erinacea - cultivated "Golden Spiders"


Stone Jaguar

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Greetings.

 

I have made prior mention on this forum about how attractive I find this particular species, particularly its long, deeply embossed leaves that are unusual and perhaps unique for the genus. Andreas's fantastic photographs of this species (and related taxa) in habitat show how striking it is when mature. I have two brevistylous plants growing here in California courtesy of Frank Omilian's efforts to bring this species into cultivation. Both of these plants are seed-grown, ~three year-old individuals from Timika, Papua. The larger plant has been grown here for about 16 months, while the smaller plant arrived and was transplanted late this past summer. They are vigorous growers under warm to hot and humid tropical conditions and respond well to heavy feeding. Both plants are growing in 15 cm wood baskets containing a coarse mix of equal parts shredded tree fern fiber, knife-cut coco fiber cubes and LECA spheres.

 

Plants match description in H&J well in all respects, although the largest leaf blades are rather longer (to 42 cm) than those listed in the monograph, no doubt due to softer conditions in cultivation.

 

Several growers on the forum, including me, have posted queries about the feasibility of obtaining viable fruit set from selfing heterostylous Myrmecodia spp. I began experimenting with the larger plant in early September, and appear to have successfully produced a single fruit from this effort at the end of November. All four seeds produced germinated with 7-10 days of harvest. While the interval between hand-pollination and fruit emergence seems rather short (~11 weeks), the alveolus where the fruit appeared corresponds to the location of one of the first flowers that I selfed. So far, no other fruit have emerged, but I am hoping that subsequent selfings that I made on  this and several other heterostylous myrmecodias between early September and this past weekend will also bear fruit over the next several weeks and months. It remains to be seen whether other heterostylous spp. in this genus may also be successfully propagated via self-pollination. Based on past experiments, I also wonder whether amongst the heterostylous spp. in the genus, only brevistylous plants are capable of fruit set from self-pollination.

 

A view of the plants:

 

post-61-0-06880400-1449507705_thumb.jpg

 

Leaves:

 

post-61-0-53180400-1449507782_thumb.jpg

 

Corollas: (top from larger plant, lower from smaller)

 

post-61-0-75632100-1449508287_thumb.jpg

 

First fruit!

 

post-61-0-28000000-1449507910_thumb.jpg

 

Cheers,

 

J

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Bonjour

 

fantastic success ;):wub: 

 

but for the flower have you a picture more macro to see the anthers , the stigma, the ring of hairs

 

for this specie M.erinacea

 

the ring of hairs hallway up the tube

 

in brevistyle flowers anthers among hairs or apex of tube;stigma at hairs

in longistyle flowers anthers at tube apex , stigma above anthers

 

where is  the stigma ,the ring of hairs here ?

 

see here desolate in french , the heterostyly http://www.svtauclairjj.fr/primula/distylie.htm ,http://www.svtauclairjj.fr/primula/genetique.htm,http://www.svtauclairjj.fr/primula/pollinisateurs.htmand http://www.svtauclairjj.fr/primula/allopollinisation.htm

 

jeff

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Thanks for the comments.

 

Jeff, these were two corollas that were carefully extracted to expose the stigmas for manual pollination and were included only because they were handy for illustrative purposes. The pistils remained attached to the base of the flowers deep in the alveoli. If you examine at the images, you will see a white shadow just under the blue-tipping at the ends of the translucent corollas that show where the anthers are located (an anther is also partially visible in the partially-dissected lower flower). The less-distinct white shadowing around the middle of both corollas indicate the bands of hairs inside. Yes, the stigmas are positioned just below, at, or just above the hairs, depending of the stage of flower development, but always well below the anthers.

 

Please note that H&J flower descriptions for this sp. appear to be based on a very small sample size. From their incomplete description and my observations, I suspect that erinacea is tristylous, not distylous. I would not be surprised to find other Myrmecodia spp. follow this same model. The ability to observe flower development and variation in real time is just one reason why live plants are so valuable to researchers.

 

Growers interested in propagating hydnophytines should take the time to dissect flowers of their plants to familiarize themselves with their flower morphology. Since the readily available spp. are all cleistogamous I would guess that few have taken to time to do so.

 

J

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Bonjour

 

 OK when I see your picture and if the stigma is below the hairs  these flower are brevistylous ( thrum), with short stigmatic papillae,large pollen in smaller quantities without a doubt ?  may be the fecondation problem :rolleyes:

 

 all cleistogamous ?   then why brevistylous  and longistylous  flower ?

 

What roles can have ants in fertilization are there any possibilities other pollinators ?

 

jeff

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