HYB: air pod question

The question of these balloon pods is an interesting one.

I opened only one pod so far this year, a "bee" pod on Lonely Hearts that
soft-rotted off, that proved to be a balloon.  It was completely empty of
seeds.

Last year I had a number of full-sized pods, none of them intentional, tagged
crosses, that proved to be balloons also.  A few adventitious pods did have a
normal seed complement, however.  The majority did not.

Unlike Linda Mann reports, none of the tagged crosses proved to be empty.  All
had seeds.

It appears that something more than pollenization is involved.  Many plants
will set "fruits" (which in the case of iris are seed pods) if the stem area
of the fruit has  higher than normal specific growth hormones in the tissues
at a critical time of development, which probably in iris would be about the
time of normal pollenization.  Wounds to the bloomstalks or stems, which we
saw in abundance both this year and last due to weather factors and winter
injury, may have affected the normal circulation pattern of growth factors in
the plants, preventing hormones generated by the blossom or ovary from their
normal downflow into the bloomstalk.  In the case of these balloons, I am
suggesting the hormone levels under the blossom became abnormally high and
triggered a fruit-set without seed formation.  There's no way to verify this,
of course.

I would think that if any part of the pollenization process had been involved,
however, one would see at least some chaff or an abnormal seed or two.  These
ballons, or at least all those I've examined, are absolutely clean, devoid of
any suggestion of seed, chaff or aborted seed development, suggesting a
vegetative rather than a sexual origin.

Neil Mogensen  Zone 7, western NC

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index