Here it is 24 hrs later as seen through the side of the glass:
Here it is removed from the perlite (scale 1 gap = 1/16 inch):
I potted it up into seedling mix. This fresh batch of mix (a different brand to my previous fungus gnat-affected seedling mix) does not presently show fungus gnat activity…I have already pre-tested it for such problems with another two embryo-seedlings.
I dressed the surface of the seedling wix with some perlite also, which is something I never used to do, but see a lot of you here doing!
The only other embryo which has survived to green up out of the 14 embryos is this one:
There is still no appreciable rootlet formation on this one.
The tips of its cotyledons are not greening up, and I am guessing this correlates with zones of “waxiness” which I am finding on some of these very dry embryos.
I wonder now…could these waxy zones be in fact regions of embryo tissue necrosis???
Both greened up ones out of the 14, have died.
Will prolly try again soon, on what achenes remain.
OK… in the last hour since writing my last posting here, I’ve extracted all the remaining achenes (like ~25 of them)… There are something like 10+ seeds that look very thin and dried out, but may contain some sort of embryo in them…there must have been a similar number that had dead seed in them (thus eliminated).
Maybe I’ll skip the 3 day water soak after I remove their papery coverings, and sow them after a lesser soaking time??
It is very difficult to know how best to deal with embryos from such dessicated rose seed as this!!!
Who knows!
LOL!
I think I counted 7 embryos swimming around in the glass of water, after all coverings were removed.
I’m not going to bore you with more embryo pix, they all look the same as what has been posted further up here, and in any case these quality pix cannot show the important color changes that really tell the true story about the condition of these embryos.
In bright light all have some degree of waxy marbling. I will be lucky to get one seedling from this batch of super-dried seed.
I wont give up, quite yet…I am going to trial them without the usual 3 day water soak this time, in case this helps…I have no idea what else different to do to get a result!!
So I’ll sow 'em as soon as I get back form the vet in a few hours…till then they can soak in tap water for a few hours, I’m sure a few hours water soak is not going to cause harm.
(hopefully pooch has survived his big surgery, its happening right now I believe…)…yep its all hapenin’, here today!!!
At least one of these embryos has started to swell up and might be starting to show a faint yellow/lime color (good signs)…Sooooo, at this point in time, the situation appears not to be entirely hopeless for one germination.
To my surprise all 7 embryos are alive, some slightly yelow-lime in color, others still worryingly white.
As with their R.gigantea embryo “cousins”, these R.gig X R.long embryos are showing a very slow development when compared to most other embryos from dry seed I have worked with.
How did the surgery go? What did he have done?
David Sikes DVM
Hi Doc!
Dx:
Digital tumor (path not done, I did not want ot lose hope, but too bad it was seemingly making black pigments).
Sx:
- Disarticulation of toe @ metatarsophalangeal joint.
2.R/O four unrealted masses I had been watching over the last few years.
At 15 yo, this rottie has astonished his vet. He has had a fantastic recovery. Now demanding walkies!!
ohh… I forgot to say, there is no more pain…hurray!!
Thx for being soooo caring to ask!!!
Here they are in the wetted perlite, as of a few minutes ago:
Only miniscule amounts of patchy greening in this embryo:
Embryo alive but totally whitened:
Embryo alive, opening cotyledons, no visible greening:
Embryo elongating its radicle, only a hint of greening along one margin:
Embryo cotyledons visible as two “bunny ears” emerging behind a perlite particle…again hardly any greening:
The only embryo with significant greening up (involving one cotyledon and the all-vital “apical meristem V region” only):
No greening up, embryo still alive:
Here are 6 of the 7 embryos, I managed to photograph as of this morning (#7 is also similar in appearance):
These are all alive, but for this amount of time spent in sterile perlite (I think over 1 week!!), they just have not progressed any great deal IMO.
I really have no clue what else to do to them, to get them to grow and green up!!! Sooooo, my last resort measure is to plant 'em!!!
I planted them very close to the surface in a perlite/seedling mix media (1:1) and covered each pot with cling wrap to maintain some extra humidity, and placed them in a shady part of a room indoors.
I am hoping that some nitrates and other chemicals in the seedling mix are going to stimulate them to get going.
These have proved to be a stubborn lot!
George, I just had a brain explosions thinking of this…
When you do tissue culture you do it in two basic parts (generalising lots). The first part uses auxins to initate callousing and root formation and the second part initiates leaf production. I have a DIY tissue culture kit somewhere here and will try to find what the root promoting substance is but from memory it is mostly IBA (or NAA), which is also an ingredient of some liquid hormone mixtures for striking cuttings. I wonder if a dilute application of IBA might help get these guys going??? Yates Clonex contains IBA (see link) and might be worth a shot.
Link: www.yates.com.au/products/books-tools-and-propagation/propagation/yates-clonex-purple-rooting-hormone-gel/
Hi Simon!
Thx for trying to help out. I really have no clue about that.
These gigXlong embryos showed a waxy/pearly white, mosaic pattern.
There is no doubt in my mind that this mosaic pattern correlates with some dormant state, maybe even tissue damage, although I am just guessing. There seems to be a general deficiency of chlorosynthesis. I think this is the crux of the problem here…they are tinkering between life and death, extremely delicate situation I think. Hmmmmm…
Unfortunately I don’t have a fluro indoor grow-light set-up, which puts things at a disadvantage. That is one reason I try and pot these up as early as possible, to introduce them to sunlight as fast as I can.
I have a gut feeling, that if any one of these can just make a critical amount of chlorophyl, then that will get it over the uphill battle to germination.
Fascinating stuff!!!
Only three remain “alive”. Two which remain totally white and look mnot much dfferent to the day they were extracted from their seed coverings, and the third which has only partially opened its cotyledons and which is also chlorophyl deficient.
Lesson learned:
Very dried and waxy embryos + WEC---->horrendously low % germinations.
Update:
The only ones that remain are two which as of a couple of days ago had still not greened up nor grown in any manner whatsoever…they looked exactly the same as they did when they were first extracted.
To me this is all totally fascinating.
My guess about what is happening, is that this batch of dried+air freighted achenes are exhibiting a true embryo dormancy (as distinct from seed coat dormancy). They are not dead, because if they were dead they would have turned into paste the minute I prodded them (they remain solid).
I buried these last remaining two in a media consisting of seedling mix/perlite (1:1) as a last resort, to see if this action stimulates them to sprout.
So, now there is an even higher chance the result here may be zero seedlings!
To give a time perspective to the above two “dormant” embryos, they have undergone no obvious physical changes/growth, despite culturing for 2 weeks post extraction, and are alive!
Question:
Do rose embryo waxy changes which are typical of some dried rose seeds, correlate with true rose embryo dormancy (as opposed to seed coat dormancy)??
(I guess rose embryo “seed coat dormancy” is what I observe when I extract embryos from freshly picked seed, where once the seed coats are removed the embryos rapidly go on to germinate over the next week or so, if cultured).
End result = zero % germinations!