Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Bulbs => Ian Young's Bulb Log - Feedback Forum => Topic started by: winwen on February 12, 2009, 03:14:03 PM
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Ian,
in bulblog 12/03/03 you wrote: "It is often written that Corydalis are not self compatible and you need two clones to get a seed set. I do not find this to be true and as long as I pollinate the flowers with a paint brush we get a good set of viable seed to increase our stocks."
Are you sure that you successfully selfed the Corydalis or could it be, that successful cross-polination by insects had taken place? For which species do you find that they could be self-compatible under certain conditions (gametophytic self-incompatibility as in Corydalis may not be a mechanism that works for 100% of the self-pollination-attempts and may fail for instance under certain stress-conditions, even Henrik Zetterlund/Magnus Liden write, that with "a few" species rupturing of the stigma is enough to overcome self-incompatibility)?
Kind regards
Erwin
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Erwin
At that time I had only one bulb of some of the species so there could have been no cross fertilisation.
I managed to get fertile seeds by using my paint brush.
I think that some plants may become self-compatible if they have not become fertilised as they reach maturity. In other words the incompatibility breaks down as it is better to be self fertilised than not fertilised at all - just a theory.
One other possibility is I created hybrids and with some species I found it difficult to tell but some of the distinct species came true.
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This is very interesting, Ian!
For which kind of Corydalis species did you make observations of self-incompatibility-breakdown?
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I will need to check back but certainly C.nudicaulis and C.oppositifolia - that I remember
My other point was as there are few insects around our garden at the time many of the Corydalis are flowering using a paint brush results in seed being set in most cases.
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I am very interested in this topic!
I want to ask a question: is Corydalis decumbens a self-incompability species?
Thank you! :)
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A good question but I have no direct experience of growing this species.
What I will say is that even if a species has a built in self-incompatibility it does not mean that it will never be able to self fertilise and set viable seed it is just less likely to.
In some plants the mechanism that prevents self fertilisation is built into the chemistry of the stigmatic surface. As the flower comes to the end of its season this self-incompatibility mechanism can break down allowing the plant to fertilise itself.
The mechanism can also be overridden sometimes by removing the very tip of the stigma and placing the pollen directly onto the tube just below where the stigmatic surface had been.
If you only have a single clone of a plant all these methods are worth trying in an attempt to get some seeds.