An overnight water soaking brought bounce and turgidity into all the seeds from the white blend HT(4 seeds) and Sea Foam (3 seeds).
So I selected these two embryos from the white blend HT to become CASE 7 and CASE 8:
And I selected these two embryos from Sea Foam to become CASE 9 and CASE 10:
I am going to process all these 10 embryos exactly as I set out for CASE 1.
The beauty of this method, is that once I have them in water, there is no fuss at all…just plant 'em when they seem to reach the limit of their “growth/sprouting” in the glass of water (see CASE 1).
In the next ten entries I will just show the final germiantion outcomes, ie. either seedling or dead embryo!
Well, maybe it is meaningful to show just ONE picture of each of the embryos at some point as they start to grow in the water!
Pictures are part of the fun, what the heck!
CASE 2:
CASE 3:
CASE 4:
CASE 5:
From this morning here are the remaining ten…what happened to CASE 8 you ask??..it slipped out of my hands as I was transferring it for a photo shot, and ended up somewhere around the kitchen sink…I tried to find it, even undid the S-bend under the sink…rofl…couldn’t be found!! LOL
CASE 6:
CASE 7:
CASE 9:
CASE 10:
BTW, if any Australian readers here have any locally derived gigantea OP seed that has not been stratified, I would love to examine some of its embryos. I am interested to see the percentage of live embryos in a population of OP seed.
To replace my careless loss of CASE 8, here is CASE 8a (mutabilis X OP):
The hip from which this achene was derived was accidentally found on the back lawn a couple of days ago (it was one of those I had harvested last week for this study…it probably had fallen out of my hand). Two days ago, I removed this achene and soaked it in water…so I thought why not use it for this study, as I am now one embryo short!?
The extracted rose seed:
The embryo:
I can’t imagine the slightly different treatment of this hip (ie. being left on the ground a few days after being picked off the bush, and then 2 days of water soaking the achene) is really going to add much bias to the results of this study (either good or bad)…however if you disagree, please let me know, and I’ll look for a fresh hip!
And for amusement, here finally is CASE 8, which I swept up off the floor (pictured here after it had received a lethal dose of drying in the air, plus all manner of physical broom insults…it bounced like a hard grain of rice):
AN INTERESTING UPDATE:
This afternoon, I reviewed some of the planted embryos, and CASE 2 looks like it has a fusion of cotyledons on one side entirely. I have never seen this phenomenon before, and I don’t have a clue what it means in terms of seedling normality. I should have noticed this after taking this picture a few days ago, just before it was planted (at the time of taking this picture, I passed the weird apperarance as some sort of “unbalanced” opening of cotyledons, rather than a fusion-which had never even crossed my mind):
These things are tiny…maybe I should also use my trusty pocket microscope (30X) to get a more accurate picture of embryo health, at the outset.
I am thinking now that I should eliminate it, and repalce it, as I set out to have only normal appearing embryos in this study.
If anyone has had any experiences with such seedlings, I would love to hear about these!
Here is the fusion of the cotyledons (CASE 2), as it appeared this morning after being plucked out of the germination mix and washed down a little:
Here an inverted view of the same thing:
Under the 30X microscope, there was also an abnormal massing of tissues building up at the point where cotyledon meets radical (I hope that makes sense).
If it means anything this was an Iceberg(triploid) X OP embryo, (before I canned it!).
I thought you might want to see this from New Dawn X OP (I am searching for a replacement embryo to CASE 2):
Here the hip opened up:
Here are the rose seeds it contained:
The rose seed on the left had an embryo that was amost ok, but did have some discoloration/blemish on one cotyledon (rejected), the central seed is junk, and on the right are twins, also of junk quality:
This Iceberg XOP looks good:
The rose seed looks good:
After an overnight water soak I’ll remove the coverings and see if the embryo is normal…hopefully this will be end of this boooooring search for normal looking embryos!
Well…this Iceberg embryo WAS bizarre:
Its cotyledons were closed up in a zig-zag / interlocking manner o_O.
Under 30X magnification the cotyledonary end was showing some green goo-like substance, and since I was not going to use this embryo, I broke apart its cotyledons and there was some globular glistening green “gel” in the space between the cotyledons which themselves were each domed so as ot create space for this substance between them.
I have reached the limit of my search for a normal embryo…pretty much all the roses are pruned or without hips as far as my friends and family’s rose gardens go.
If any Australians reading this thread wish to send me one or two unusual species hips to include in this study, then please let me know here, before it gets too late. Otherwise I’ll just use the nine embryos I already have.
Here is CASE 8a after a few days in water. This picture was taken through the base of the glass of water, I did this deliberately so that I could show you a membranous attachment floating about as it swims. You can see this membrane attached somehwere between the cotyledons. I dont like it, whatever it is:
Here CASE 8a sized up (tape measure shows INCHES):
CASE 1(Flower Carpet White XOP):
This germinated several days ago.
I have it in shade at the moment as the morning sun is too hot, it caused scorching on the edge of one cotyledon (you can just see the curled burned tip of the cotyledon to the right of screen)!
Here is the progress CASE 8a has made in the glass of water over the last few days (compare this picture to the one posted a few days ago).
As you can see it continues to grow. Also, the annoying persistant membranous attachment is more defined in this picture:
It turns out that picturing these embryos through the base of the glass of water is infinitely easier than fiddling with them and removing them, and also risking losing them! The drawback is color inaccuracy, but that is not of vital importance to me, as long as the message can be conveyed).
Time escaped me, I now realise this embryo has been growing in the glass of water for one week.
I am not sure if it is better keeping it for a few more days in the water to see if it starts sprouting at the radical end, or if it would be better to plant it now?!
…I’ll leave it a few more days in water, and see what happens.
Here 24 hrs later is CASE 8a again:
I looked at it under 30X magnification to try and figure out what is going on with that “cobwebbing” stuck at the mid-cotyledon (shown here mid-way along the cotyledon to the left of screen)…instead I noticed accidentally the very beginings of the true leaves in between the “v” of the cotyledons…Soooooo best I plant it, me thinks!
Here is the CASE 9 germination (Sea Foam X OP):
Here is the CASE 10 germination (Sea Foam X OP):
Here is the CASE 4 germination (Lamarque X OP):
And here it the seedling pulled out to show you the hypocotyl and rootlet development: