BTW, now thinking back even more, I do recall that when I was peering down the pocket microscope looking at some of these achenes a few nights ago, (i.e. before I decided to open them up the next day), I did notice a weird moth-eaten appearance at the radical end of the achenes I looked at.
I don’t know if this odd appearance relates to these grubs, but it is not something I had noticed in the appearance of the sprouting multiflora achenes, (pictured many weeks ago further up in this thread, with their radicals satarting to sprout out).
I still haven’t answered for myself the question of whether some rose achenes can be put through 8 weeks of water soaking and then get germinations after sowing in the usual manner.
Two days ago, I was lucky enough to have harvested many Iceberg X OP hips. These hips were fully ripe (but not soft).
I got ~50+ achenes, which I then immediately placed in one water-filled baby food jar. Nearly all sank, but there were a few floaters, which I kept. I know some of these floaters will eventually sink as they begin to absorb the water. I have observed this in a very dramatic way with multiflora achenes, where a whole lot float in water at the start, and nearly all sink a few days into a water soak.
I have put this jar in the fridge.
I’ll check on them now and again and replace the water only if it shows cloudiness, otherwise I’ll do nothing else to them.
After 8 weeks I’ll sow them in seed raising mix.
I’ll post results here on this thread, as they come to hand.
Although I am not deliberately using embryo extraction / culture any more as a preferred means of getting rose achene germinations, I still think there is value in documenting how the embryos behave with water soaking them and then getting them to progress to live seedlings.
This new method of embryo germinations I have dabbled in lately seems far superior to two previous methods I had used (1.jar culture, and 2. planting unsprouted embryos in seed raising mix).
I decided to put this new water-soaking embryo method to a real test by running a few “live cases” here. The cases I would like to present here in the near future are totally random, and will be in real-time, so I will have no more idea of the outcome than you will!
It invloves next to no time and effort for me, and maybe some of you may benefit from the knowledge…all I need is the odd OP rose hip!
At the very least I hope some of you find it fun to just watch!
CASE 1:
Flower Carpet White X OP, pictured today (after 7 days of water soaking). No stratification, derived from an orange/red hip (there was only achene in that small hip):
Next time I’ll also start posting pictures of the hips and maybe the achenes before the extractions are done.
As soon as I decide to plant this one, I’ll show you what it looks like just before planting, and then I’ll track its progress until germination (or failure).
Here is the sort of appearance of the Flower Carpet XOP hips at the stage I like to pick them (this one I picked this morning for the study)…they are very few and far between to find:
Now lets open it up:
Now for the embryo inside:
The testa sack is hollowed, so I am not even going to bother looking at this embryo, it will be junk for sure!!
Deep inside the achene, you can just make out a dark line…this looks probably like a twin that did not form and atrophied.
This type of false alarm happens quite a bit with FC-W XOP.
You can see why you shouldn’t blame yourself if some rose seeds never germinate, even if they look so promising!!
Now, onto the next case…
Here an Iceberg XOP hip I just picked off the bush:
Now to extract the seed out:
Now to extract the embryo, as this seed looks good.
This is how I start the removal of the testa (i.e at the cotyledonary pole, never at the radical pole):
At this stage I usually put the half exposed embryo in a glass of water, so it releases itself out of its remaining testa…this can take minutes to hours, but as I was in a hurry today, I removed the remaining testa with the box cutter knife. This is a dangerous step, and I would not recommend you do it as the chances of killing the radical and embryo are too high to justify the easier fool-proof option of allowing it to do so itself, in a glass of water!
So now this embryo is in a glass of water, and will water soak continuously for many days, until it hopefully sprouts a rootlet, and it now becomes CASE 2.
Here a hip from an unnamed white blend HT rose, picked this morning:
Lets open it up:
Now to extract the seeds.
Two of these achenes were considerably flat. Flat achenes are much harder to open up without damaging the seed inside, in my experience!
Now lets cut away half the testa:
I can’t show you but only one of these embryos looked and felt possibly ok…they were not quite the right shine and turgor…they felt rather rubbery, which is a bad sign…they were not damaged.
I am going to let these spend a few hours in water, and then I’ll decided how many (if any) are worth putting in a water soaking trial in the first place (I can’t see the point of trying things that are very questionable this early on!).
Stay tuned…
Several hours of water soaking did the trick to free the testa from these three suspect embryos.
Here you can see the first one has a very abnormal design, it could possibly be a multi-cotyledon…whatever it is, I am eliminating it, as I don’t want to soak embryos that are not normal looking in this series, as it will just add another potential bias to the results, which is not really helpful:
And this one is totally bizarre looking and it is out:
This third one was likely the one that looked the more promising of the three at the start, and it looks acceptable. So it will be CASE 3:
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Here a Flower Carpet Amber XOP hip:
Lets open it up:
Now lets check out the embryo inside:
This embryo squrited out like a paste…it was liquified…so no good!
Now two ??Flower Carpet Pink XOP hips, each contained one achene:
And here, the picture shows both achenes opened up…the seed on the left was gelatinised, the seed on the right was just a blackened crumpled testa, I did not bother opening it up…no good!!
Oh well, better luck tomorrow, I would ultimately like at least 5 different “normal looking embryo cases” in this study, preferably ten.
As you can see, rose embryo health does not correlate with good looking hips or achenes, unfortunately. Of course, selection of triploids does not help, however I can only harvest what is available. :0)
Update CASE 1: Here it is this morning:
The very tip of the hypocotyl is developing a slightly darkened tone, the cotyledons are tinged a very faint green. I think these might all be good signs.
Since the last 24/48 hours, it is not doing much more “sprouting” in the glass of water, so I guessed it was time to shift this one into the germination mix. As far as the planting goes, it has been planted by poking a small hole in pre-wetted seed raising mix in the centre of a small pot (~3.5" X 3.5" X 3.5").
I covered it lightly, very closely to the surface of the mix. I then sprayed it down with the hand mister, so that a small part of its green surface (~5%) was showing, for it to benefit from a little light exposure.
Here is CASE 1, 24hrs after planting.
It is in the cente of the picture, the 4 objects above it and one across bottom right are slug baits.
It has shifted upwards to show about double of the amount of cotyledon I had exposed to the air at planting.
Here is a LamarqueXOP hip I picked today, with one of its 7 achenes removed:
Here is the rose seed removed, and half its testa also removed:
I’ve placed this seed in a glass of water this evening…by tomorrow morning the remaining half-testa should have released itself by the action of the water.
I’ll show you what the embryo looks like as soon as this happens (I have always been curious about what the OP seedlings of this rose look like).
So this morning all the testa was gone and it will be CASE 4.
It has been my experience that long conical curved embryos like this one, are easier to break apart when attempting to remove their testa in one go, compared to this two stage method where I remove the cotyledonary end of the testa, and the subsequent water soak removes the radical end (without any chance of injury to the embryo).
I wish I had discovered this trick earlier on this year, when I was doing the R.Clinophylla embryos, which were similar in structure to this one, only smaller and even thinner!
Here is a hip I picked today from Mutabilis:
Here is one viable rose seed from it with half its testa covering removed:
More on the full appearance of the embryo minus the testa coverings, after a few hours of water soaking.
So the mutabilis embryo looks normal after a 14 hour water soak:
This is will be CASE 5.
Another Iceberg XOP. It contained two achenes, one had a junk seed, the other a good seed (seen here with partially removed testa):
The embryo released itself from its partial coverings very soon after hitting water, and it looks ok, so it can be CASE 6:
Showing here the real life truth of collecting hips and looking for embryos in good shape can be a bore for you to read, I do understand…it is also boring my end, trust me LOL… But I really am curious to find out the outcome, ie. the end result of the trial!
So I have omitted posting the pictures of quite a few ripe hips which ended up having junk seeds…especially Flower Carpet Pink and Mutabilis hips…I have been dealing with a population of obviously poor seed parents, and under these circumstances it takes some time to collect even ten good embryos. An uncle of mine has a Queen Elizabeth bush, I’ll visit today hoping that it has not been given its annual savage winter pruning yet…lol
The white blend HT rose I used in CASE 3 also had a few crinckled and very dehydrated hips.
Here is one such hip opened hip opened up, and its achenes:
And here are the respective rose seeds:
The blackened seed on the far left of screen is junk, but I put the remaining four rose seeds in a glass of water.
This time, I did not half remove the seed coverings, I’ll do that only to the ones that show promise after this initial water soaking / rehydration step.
Here are a few Sea Foam (triploid, climber) hips harvested today, and their respective achene contents.
Here are the rose seeds exposed:
The darker smaller seed above the number 48 was junk, but some of the others might be good seeds.
I’ll check them out again after a ~24hr water soaking to get a clearer picture of which (if any) of these are good seeds, based on the embryo appearances then.