CULT:HYB: like seeds? love this...

Hey gang,

some of you who are particularly attentive may have noticed that I have been
disecting a lot of my seeds this year.  (I only have one seedling to date
two inches tall with two leaves, so I was bored, okay.)

For those of you who have been able to restrain your curiosity, apparently
the root structure begins to form from the middle of the seed.  When I cut
down through the center of the seed, from the rounded hump side toward the
narrow flat side and open the seed I see; the brown outer seed coat around
the outside (like a watermelon rind), the white meaty flesh of the seed,
and, once it starts to form, the root structure, at the core of the seed.
There is also some kind of soft tissue, I have seen it anywhere between leaf
green and grey black, at the butt end of the seed, which when the seed is
dry is a golden retriever brown.

At first the root structure is just a little thin elongated place that is
more white than the rest of the seed flesh (like the very very middle of an
onion).  Over time it grows in a straight line toward the 'umbilical' divot
at the point of the seed.  Once it reaches the end of the seed, I assume, it
does whatever it needs to do to break through the outer seed coat and sprout
into the roots that y'all are already looking for.

Anyway, a few of those that I have disected since the first sprout sprouted
looked to me like they were just on the verge of popping out the end so I
squeezed the two halves back together and poked them into the soil next to
my spider plant, just to see if anything would still happen.

So, I was bored this evening, standing next to the spider plant, checking
the status of my three sprouts, so I started to root around in the soil to
see if I could see any signs of anything.  I turned over three of these
split seeds, two of them were mushy middled and clearly not doing anything..
But the third  was still nice and white.  Upon examining the root structure
I noticed that the growth end was raised above the plane of the cut and
starting to turn root color (when the root pops out of the seed it is a
little tiny bit greenish/yellowish, not quite as white as the root structure
inside the seed).  Both halves had this raised and colored quality, although
one of the halves doesn't have as much root structure to work with.

Anyway,  I think that the disected seed is still trying to sprout!  I've
potted him up seperately to see if  he goes on and does it....
I hypothesize that the difference between this seed and the other disected
seeds is that when I disected this one I didn't disturb the adhesion between
the root structure and the flesh of the seed.

in the mornin', in the evenin', ain't we got fun?

Christian
Ky

---------------------------------------------------------------------
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