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Re: Romneya coulteri


Dear Phil,

About the burning of pine needles for Romneya germination:
We have heard about it, but haven't yet tried it.  Does this mean that the
process of the fire will result in some kind of GA-3 compound that will
spur on germination?  Norman Deno says that leaf mold can provide the
appropriate chemicals/fungi to germinate the seed--and we're wondering if
the same (or very alike) chemical is present in both approaches.

About dividing Romneyas;
Have you actually done this?  All of our catalogs go on endlessly about how
they resent root disturbance.  On the other hand, we have read (not in a
catalog), that they can be propagated via root cuttings, done when the
plant is dormant.

Bill & Harvey
SKID   zone 6  CT  USA


>I'd love to have more info about Ga-3 as well, but I'm writing to ask a
>question about Romneya coulteri, aka matilija poppies.  As most of the
>readers of this group know, Romneya is famously difficult to germinate
>(which may be why it's restricted to such a tiny area in the wild),
>although it's easy enough to divide in the spring.  Since it's a chaparral
>plant, it's probably fire-adapted -- but not necessarily because it needs
>heat, as do many closed-cone pines, for instance.  I wonder if it's not
>more like some proteas in needing not heat, but certain chemicals in order
>to overcome its dormancy.  I read in Pacific Horticulture a year or two ago
>about some experiments done at Kirstenbosch in South Africa, in which they
>discovered that some protea species seed needed *chemicals contained in the
>smoke* of burning fynbos plants in order to germinate. Interestingly, the
>composition of the burned material seemed to be important, i.e. smoke from
>non-fynbos plants didn't work.  Kirstenbosch now sells little discs of
>paper which have been soaked in smoke solution, which supposedly work just
>fine as aids to germination for these proteas -- the idea is you moisten
>the paper and set the seeds on it, and the chemicals in the paper are
>transferred to the seed, which then germinates.  Pretty elegant solution, I
>thought.  Anyway, my question is, does anyone know if similar studies have
>been done on Romneya?  Maybe one should try burning a bunch of ponderosa
>pine and arctostaphylos chips and see what you get.
>
>
>(All right, I live in California.  I guess if no one else has experimented
>with this, it'll be up to me to do it.)
>
>Phil
>
>#################################################################
>Philip Stevens
>Assistant Director
>Center for Cultural Studies
>University of California
>Santa Cruz, CA  95064
>(408)459-3436
>(408)459-4979 (fax)
>pstevens@cats.ucsc.edu
>#################################################################
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