fred Posted October 31, 2014 Report Share Posted October 31, 2014 Hi all, I grow a few Hydnophytum species, they flower and set seed without problem. My M. salomonensis on the other hand flowers, but never produces seeds. The flowers don't even open, sometimes there's a tiny slit and I check up on them but they don't open any further. I tried both removing the petals and forcing them open to pollinate them manually, but I never been successful. Any tips? regards, Fred Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derrick Posted October 31, 2014 Report Share Posted October 31, 2014 Myrmecodia salomonensis Becc. (Odoardo Beccari) published in Malesia raccolta 2, p175, (1884). (Malesia 2) http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44197946#page/289/mode/1up. Merr. & L. M. Perry (Elmer Drew Merrill & Lily May Perry) Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 26, p31 (1945) (J. Arnold Arbor.) http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8443428#page/35/mode/1up. See also M. tuberosa Jack “salomonensis”. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas Wistuba Posted November 2, 2014 Report Share Posted November 2, 2014 Hi all, I grow a few Hydnophytum species, they flower and set seed without problem. My M. solomonensis on the other hand flowers, but never produces seeds. The flowers don't even open, sometimes there's a tiny slit and I check up on them but they don't open any further. I tried both removing the petals and forcing them open to pollinate them manually, but I never been successful. Any tips? regards, Fred Actually, I feel that pollination in many Hydnophytinae are a bit of a mystery. Often they are considered cleistogamous because the flowers seem not to open. However, when dissecting such flowers one can often find mechanisms that prevent self pollination, going as far as male or female flowers... Of cause a male or female flower, that does not open does not make any sense at all, as it cannot self-pollinate. I feel that these flowers or the natural pollinators are not yet understood and that in the wild there are pollinators (ants???) that open these flowers and are doing pollination work. In cultivation, in addition my experience is that even species that do self pollinate do not always fruit but sometimes during certain periods of the season or in other cases when they are fertilized well. So there still is a lot to be found out and lots of room for speculation... All the best Andreas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted November 3, 2014 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2014 Derrick, sorry for the typo. I never double-checked the spelling in the 2 years I'm growing it. Andreas, yesterday I moved some plants to a small lightbox for overwintering, including my M. salomonensis. Much to my amazement there was - what looks like - a fruit developing. It's pale with darker stripes, I'll take a picture later today. However, it's on a location that I didn't manually pollinate so it'll remain a mystery. One small remark regarding ant pollination. Aren't ants very territorial/defensive, meaning that ants from one colony (plant) would have little chance to visit a second colony? regards, Fred Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derrick Posted November 3, 2014 Report Share Posted November 3, 2014 Maeyama T. Matsumoto T. 2000. Genetic relationship of myrmecophyte (Anthorrhiza caerulea) individuals within and among territories of the arboreal ant (Dolichoderus sp.) detected using random amplified polymorphic DNA markers. Austral Ecology Vol. 25, 3, pp273- 282. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1442-9993.2000.01034.x/abstract With available time and patience it is often possible to bypass these money making institutions and find FREE sites such as this one that provide the entire article. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/tropics/10/4/10_4_509/_pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Posted November 4, 2014 Report Share Posted November 4, 2014 Fred, There is not a one to one relationship of one ant colony to one plant. The ant colonies are large enough that one ant colony may inhabit tens or hundreds of ant-plants on any one tree or even on groups of trees. So the ants may have many plants of any particular species to visit within their colony. Any given ant colony probably also inhabits not only Rubiaceous ant-plants like Hydnophytum and Myrmecodia but also Lecanopteris ferns, Dischidias and other plants with ant accommodations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted November 4, 2014 Author Report Share Posted November 4, 2014 Frank, I did not consider that. BTW, here's the picture of the newly discovered fruit: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted December 16, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2014 Final update: ripe fruit: This resulted in 4 seeds, all of which germinated. This is how they look today, 1 month after sowing: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas Wistuba Posted December 16, 2014 Report Share Posted December 16, 2014 Hello Fred, please feel free to upload images to the forum directly. External links may become invalid at some time, which makes the thread useless then. Also, it's much more convenient to read a posting that already contains the relevant images. All the best Andreas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted December 17, 2014 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2014 Hi Andreas, the photos are now on the forum. For those interested, the album is here: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeff Posted December 21, 2014 Report Share Posted December 21, 2014 Bonjour great sucess for the myrmecodia cleistogamous ? but sometimes heterostylous ( longistyle-brevistyle) yes like M.aureospina , M .sterrophylla, M .albertisii etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterostyly jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted January 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted January 9, 2015 Thanks Jeff, Is it possible to distinguish between the two forms using a magnifier ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeff Posted January 10, 2015 Report Share Posted January 10, 2015 for the heterostylous species yes , with a microscope or a binocular especially in the corolla see the ring hairs position , the position of the anther and the stigma with this ring hairs. on the M.aureospina : with the longistyle flower , the ring hairs are at midway up the tube , anthers among the hairs stigma halfway up the lobes with the brevistyle flower , the ring hair lower the tube ,anthers at apex the tube, stigma above the ring hair but the M.tuberosa 'salomonensis' seem not heterostylous see this article in french desolate "Déjà, Darwin proposait, en 1877, que le positionnement réciproque des anthères et stigmates des morphes floraux des plantes hétérostyles permettrait de favoriser l’allopollinisation en plaçant le pollen d’un morphe sur une partie du corps de l’insecte pollinisateur correspondant précisément à la zone qui entrera en contact avec les stigmates d’un autre morphe. Il observa d’ailleurs que lorsqu’il introduisait différents objets comme des poils, des aiguilles ou des proboscis d’abeilles mortes dans des fleurs de Primula spp., les grains de pollen étaient déposés sur des zones différentes suivant le morphe. D’autres auteurs ont, par la suite, examiné la répartition du pollen brévistyle et longistyle sur des insectes visitant des plantes distyliques. Le pollen des deux morphes se trouvait sur des parties différentes du corps des pollinisateurs visitant Fagopyrum esculentum (Rozov & Skrebtsova, 1958, cité par Namai, 1990), Pulmonaria et Cratoxylum[4]. Chez Eichhornia paniculata (Pontederiaceae), une espèce tristylique, les fleurs tubulaires sont auto-compatibles et pourtant 77 % des fécondations sont inter-morphes [5]. L’auto-incompatibilité presque toujours associée à l’hétérostylie rend infructueuse toute pollinisation entre morphe de même type. Baker[6] reconnaît que le pollen déposé sur un stigmate incompatible est gaspillé car il ne participe pas au succès reproducteur de la plante. Il doit donc exister une pression de sélection tendant à diminuer les transferts incompatibles et augmenter les transferts compatibles. On observe chez la plupart des espèces distyliques que les stigmates des fleurs longistyles récoltent plus de pollen que ceux des fleurs brévistyles[2]. Cela est attribué à la plus grande accessibilité, au contact avec des insectes, des styles longs que des styles courts[7]. Dans la plupart des espèces hétérostyles, les étamines courtes des fleurs longistyles produisent des grains de pollens plus nombreux et plus petits[2]. Selon Ganders[1], la production plus importante en grains de pollen des fleurs longistyles servirait à compenser le faible dépôt de pollen sur les stigmates des fleurs brévistyles. Celles-ci reçoivent, en conséquence, une plus grande proportion de pollen compatible. La taille inférieure de ces grains ne serait qu’un moyen physiologique pour en produire un nombre plus important[7]." jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred Posted April 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 16, 2015 Recently had a new berry. During cleaning the sticky threads that the seeds use to hold on to the branch were very clear. Flowering like mad, only one berry: Before squeezing them out: Here are the sticky threads (name?): regards, Fred Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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