See the link below for how this run was started.
OK…after extracting a further twenty or so achenes from this batch, the same negative embryo findings were found. Every embryo had some degree of brittlenes/hardness, slight browning/tanning, and some waxy changes. All these appearances translate to embryos that are from excessively dried achene / embryo, and these cannot be expected to germinate in WEC. Expereince has now taught me that in such cases, it is silly to attempt WEC embryo culture!!
It is time to go for conventional stratification and sowing.
There are, I think, about 85 or so achenes which remain. I am currently soaking these in a glass of tap water, and tomorrow I will warm stratify them in a plastic baggy with moistened sand (as per Henry K’s method). I will not cold stratify them at all.
Link: www.rosehybridizers.org/forum/message.php?topid=33780&rc=44&ui=2829830532
Now that I think about it, about 12 months ago I picked some bone dry hips (like totally brown and shrivelled) and for fun removed some embryos from the achenes to see how they looked. Sure enough, they had this waxy/rigid look about them, similar to what I have discussed here regarding this very dried R.clinophylla batch.
Out of curiosity I had put a few of those very “marginal looking” embryos in a glass of tap water, and did something crazy by leaving them soaking the glass of water for like 2 or maybe 3 weeks, (I just can’t remember exactly how long I left them soaking, but it was definitely weeks, not days). In the end I was shocked to see that one of them started to green up, and eventually it germinated into a plant!! Actually it was this event that inspired me to start the whole WEC idea (Water Embryo Culture).
I might just repeat that experiment on some of these R.clinophylla embryos that I have extracted, why waste them??
It is not exactly a WEC run, but it is a fun experiment to repeat, (at least it is fun for me LOL).
Stay tuned.
Here is a picture of the waxy embryo I kept of R.clinophylla (it is not easy to convey this “waxiness” with such quality photgraphy)… I also kept one other similar looking one, as well (ie. there are two in total):
Maybe if you compare the above waxy/dry embryo with the very healthy pearly white embryos below (from another species), you might just be able to appreciate the sort of difference I am talking about…the healthy ones below came from ultra-fresh seed which had just come out of freshly picked hips:
I have the two R.clinophylla waxy embryos sitting in the same glass of tap water, indefinitely (I will change the water evrey day or so).
This is not what I normally do in WEC runs these days. Normally these days, if I see waxy embryos I discard them, due to the need to ration resources such as time and space. However it is a fun experiment to see if I can get either of these to germiantion, by an extended water soaking. Its just for fun, since I had them left over from the sampling of this batch, and was about to discard them, why not experiment with them?!
Stay tuned!
(SCALE: 1 gap = 1/16 inch in the above pictures).
UPDATE:
The experiment with the two waxy R.clinophylla embryos in continuous water immersion continues…they are still alive as they have not moulded.
For fun, here is a close up of one of the very dreid R.clinophylla achenes of this batch:
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2am:
After 5 days of continuous water immersion, here is what the waxy/highly dormant embryo looks like, now:
Scale: 1 gap = 1/16 inch.
I can nearly guarantee to you that if this embryo had undergone a three day water soak and then sown, it would already be dead!!! It was too waxy/brittle/dormant (“water starved”) to have succeeded in the usual WEC runs I have been doing.
But this current treatment is a type of water embryo culture (WEC) anyways I guess??!!
There are no signs of death, the tap water has been changed once daily, and that is all it has required.
When it was viewed earlier today in bright sunlight, it had changed appearance from the waxy/tanned tinge to a more ivory color, although there ware white aspects to parts of its surface as well.
BTW, its other sibling which I have chosen not to photograph now, to avoid confusing the two, was less dormant as it has opened its cotyledons. It has also transformed from a wax/tan coloration to a more ivory/white tone.
Both are still water soaking.
Stay tuned…