Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Seedy Subjects! => Seed Exchange => Topic started by: annew on November 02, 2010, 03:42:49 PM
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Lesley in New Zealand sent me seeds of her fertile form of Cosmos atrosanguineus 3 years ago. The accepted wisdom is that there is only one clone of this species in existence which is sterile. I raised 3 plants from the seeds, of which I still have one. This year I planted it with a plant of the commercial clone and have been hand pollinating. I now have a small quantity of seeds. I would like to send a few to some forum members to grow on, in order to perpetuate the fertile form in cultivation (and also so someone can replace mine if I kill it!). It is not fully hardy and needs to be kept frost-free over winter, at least until we have enough to test. Will anyone accept the challenge?
In the photo, the fertile parent is on the left, and the commercial clone on the right.
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Hello Annew
I would be very delighted with some seeds of this marvellous cosmos ::) If you can send someones to me, could you give me the best infos for making a success with them :D ? My address by PM
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I think I sowed the seeds with a little heat in late March. They were potted into a well drained mix and grown on, over winter kept in a cold greenhouse, no lower than -2C.
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I should expand a little on Anne's note. While I was able to collect a little seed the last couple of years, most of what I've distributed was given to me by my friend Joan McDonald who lives nearby. She and I both have a fertile clone and hers produces more seed than mine, but whatever, we're just happy to have them.
I sow the seed on usual seed mixture and cover the seed with grit. It usually germinates quickly, days even, then leave them outside until late autumn, protecting them from frosts for the first winter until there is a tuber formed. Thereafter they seem to be hardy enough here, but I don't get more than about -5 or -6C in our winter. I think over wetness in winter could be a problem.
The flowers on my plants vary somewhat, between the two forms Anne shows but all are chocolate-scanted.
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Thank you Annew and Lesley for these additional advices ;)
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May I add that thanks to a blessed soul I am able to grow this invaluable plant. Under our mild conditions and a very long summer this species deeply dislike the heat and care must be taken to give it cooler afternoon condiitions. This points to a mountain habitat and I imagine it should do well in the cool parts of Australia.
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nice colour! is the plant similar to the common garden cosmos?
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nice colour! is the plant similar to the common garden cosmos?
Not really. It's more akin to a dahlia or Nicotiana sylvestris, with fleshy roots that need protection from hard freezes. I suspect that it also dislikes winter wet in general.
Even here in Victoria, it's really only suitable for pot cultivation. In Alberta, you'd definitely have to give it dry, cold, but frost-free, storage over winter.
It also tends to emerge quite late, so there's always the temptation to overwater it before it's growing actively, resulting in the roots rotting.
The thing that many people find especially attractive about this cosmos is that the flowers are scented of chocolate, much like Berlandiera lyrata.
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thanks rodger, i was thinking more of the appearance of the plant;
it did sound like it would be tender, and i like to keep my tender plants small, not much into lifting things in fall...lol
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I would not mind a few seeds. My professor is a specialist in the Asteraceae.
Aaron
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Hi Annew, first germinating signs in my seedpot :o ;D ;D ;D
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Under our long (very long) summers the plants suffer a lot and must be given afternoon shade. Besides being tender as previous comments have mentioned, be careful not to give them really hot conditions.
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Glad to hear it! Good luck to everyone else.
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Question for Anne and Lesley
Have you tried using pollen of your fertile Cosmos plants on the sterile commercial clone? It would be important to obtain a mix of genes to help preserve this otherwise extremely rare species.
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I'll take a baby ;D
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Alberto, all the seeds I sent out were harvested from the commercial clone, pollinated with the NZ one. I only got 2 seeds from the reverse cross, mostly, I think, because the commercial clone does not seem to produce much pollen.
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I don't have a commercial plant, only the ones grown from my (and Joan's) seed, which we've had for maybe 15 years or so. It's a long time since it appeared in any of the local garden centres. I'll keep a look out for it though and even ask one of the staff who are usually unable to help much with anything involving a species name.
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Most interesting, Anne and Lesley.
I wonder if there is any NZ nursery offering Cosmos atrosanguineus
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Nothing I'm aware of at present. Alberto, but I'll keep an eye out and buy one if I see it.
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I have just come across this thread.
Lesley if you get seed this year I would love to try it.
Pat
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Pat , Cosmos atrosanguineus plants are sometimes available from some nurseries here in Victoria .
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Otto and Pat, a few commercial plants pollinated by Anne and Lesley's plants pollen would be a good start to eventually produce another viable captive population.
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We're doing our best Alberto. :) When I had my previous nursery (before we moved 14 years ago), I used to sell about 50 plants each year, all seedlings from my own. I haven't been selling recently. If Anne and I get more seed, we'd probably be wise to give them to commercial firms wherever, who would work on producing a fertile strain, rather than just to people who may want a plant or two but aren't concerned with producing more seed. MAybe we should send the seed to gardens in South America, especially Mexico?
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Dear Lesley:
Mexico is not in South America! So far, there is no serious program involving the conservation of this species. Moreover, it will not be the first time one such program tha begins with trumpets blast is discontinued. The specialized care plant growers can routinely provide is not so common.
Even a few plants in responsible homes are safer than many in a commercial firm that will not keep them forever provided sales sink.
I am certain you are doing a super job in keeping these plants alive.
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Sorry about my faux pas re Mexico. From a distance, they're pretty much the same thing, but OK, my geography is much at fault. However, the Cosmos is native to Mexico is it not?
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Sorry about my faux pas re Mexico. From a distance, they're pretty much the same thing, but OK, my geography is much at fault. However, the Cosmos is native to Mexico is it not?
Indeed it is Lesley, unfortunately now extinct in the wild. The NCCPG (now Plant Heritage) had it on their pink list and were hoping to re-introduce it. I think I am right in saying that it is being/has been re-introduced and taken off the pink list.
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If it's being re-introduced Brian, are these non-fertile, micropropagated plants or is there another seed source somewhere.
I'm looking for seed on mine now but it has been such a miserable summer.....
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Brian, if a plant that is extinct in the wild (only surviving in cultivation) is in the pink (?) List, what does it take to include it in the Red one?
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Membership of the Communist party? ;D
Absolutely no seed on mine this year and two haven't even flowered. My friend whose plants also seed, also has no seed this year but she is asking her daughter who lives further north and may have some.
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I did try to contact a couple of commercial seed companies, but they weren't interested. They also make a lot of money selling young plants of the commercial clone every year.. :-\
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If it's being re-introduced Brian, are these non-fertile, micropropagated plants or is there another seed source somewhere.
I'll try and find out Lesley
Brian, if a plant that is extinct in the wild (only surviving in cultivation) is in the pink (?) List, what does it take to include it in the Red one?
Alberto I thought the NCCPG had it's own pink list ... but it may be red :-[
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Taken from The Plant Heritage Action plan for conservation of plants in cultivation:
William Thompson, the founder of
Thompson and Morgan Seed Merchants,
first brought this tuberous rooted halfhardy
perennial to Britain in 1835.
Although it received an Award of
Garden Merit from the RHS in 1938, and
despite velvet maroon flowers with the
distinctive chocolate perfume it
disappeared from gardens. Living stock
had been preserved at the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Kew since the 1970s and during
the 1990s material was micropropagated
and cryogenically preserved. Until
recently Cosmos atrosanguineus was
thought to be extinct in the wild and
Kew’s material was repatriated to Mexico
to attempt reintroduction. However, the
present gene pool in cultivation only
derives from one or two introductions
and as cross-pollination is required to
produce viable seeds it was not certain
whether the reintroduction programme
would be successful.
All is not lost, though, since from New
Zealand has come the first instance of a
self-fertile clone, registered for Plant
Breeders Rights in New Zealand as ‘Pinot
Noir’. Plants have also more recently
been rediscovered in the wild.
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The bastard, that seed came from.....ME.
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Thanks, Brian!
Lesley, is that true????
In any case, if this fertile New Zealand form kees on going there is always the chance to retry reintroductions, which are difficult and take a number of attempts
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To be quite honest Alberto, I don't know and as yet I've not seen any release of the plant. However, I did send seed to a North Island man who has bred and released many many plants and put PVR status on them. They include sweet peas, dahlias, perennial petunias and others.
What will be interesting to see is whether the 'Pinot Noir' form is continuously grown from seed, or whether a fertile seedling is being micropropagated, in which case it may not remain fertile for very long!
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The material that has been tissue cultured is the one that is sterile and large flowered. It was useful to clean it of eventual virus infections.
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Lesley I can feel the heat from here ;)
and I don't blame you.
Recognition should be on the right shoulders.
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I asked yesterday at a couple of local garden centres if they had Cosmos atrosanguinea at all or in a new clone called 'Pinot Noir' but no-one knew anything about it. Said they might have some more plants in the spring. Pinot Noir being the latest of NZ's fashionable wines is being applied to many plants. A dahlia, a phormium, a cosmos apparently, et al. Personally, I'm happiest drinking it or munching the small but intensely sweet grapes. They make a great grape jelly.
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Lesley I googled cosmos pinot noir and found http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20100083412
have a read.
Interesting to see how one can cash in on a form of a species and want to place plant breeders rights...must be worth somebodys trouble...its about $$..crap!
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It doesn't look distinct from any of the others to me. ???
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Thanks for the link Stephen. Very interesting indeed, and yes, it was Keith Hammett to whom I gave seed. I wonder where the "cultivated area in Dunedin" is, where pollinations are carried out. My garden maybe????? :o ??? :o ??? :o >:( >:( >:(
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Thanks for the seeds Anne, just to let you know that of the ten seeds you sent I now have eight showing their first true leaves 8)
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My thanks too Anne. All but one have germinated and are coming along nicely. I'll need to be aware of the temp now as we had the first frost this morning, maybe -2 or -3 degsC. White anyway and my car coughed a bit when Roger started it up.
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Mine have germinated well too, including the 2 seeds I managed to harvest from the NZ form itself, using the commercial clone as pollen donor.
Incidentally, the pot which housed the NZ plant, and 2 plants of the commercial clone were kept in a greenhouse last winter, which got down to -7C. The NZ plant is up and looking fine, but the other 2 were killed.
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2 plants of the commercial clone were kept in a greenhouse last winter, which got down to -7C. The NZ plant is up and looking fine, but the other 2 were killed.
I lost a small one but the oldest is still ok having overwintered in the cold greenhouse :)
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Your comments are most interesting in that my losses were related to hot weather. They survived our cool (practically frost free where they were) winters but the long summer affected them adversely even tho they were not in direct sunshine for most of the day.
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Mine have germinated well too, including the 2 seeds I managed to harvest from the NZ form itself, using the commercial clone as pollen donor.
Incidentally, the pot which housed the NZ plant, and 2 plants of the commercial clone were kept in a greenhouse last winter, which got down to -7C. The NZ plant is up and looking fine, but the other 2 were killed.
We're tough down here Anne. ;D
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In fact, I agree with Alberto, that my own occasional losses of the Cosmos have been related to drought rather than cold. I lost a big potted one in the summer of 2009/10 because I didn't realize it was missing on the hosing I was doing, being a little further out of range than the plant in front of it. The thin tubers simply shrivelled up and couldn't be revived. A couple planted out had previously died in summer dry periods.
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Hi, all,
I just ran into this thread today, so pardon the lateness. I've always thought that there must be some variation and/or clones based on at least one other origin plant of the species, and I'm happy to hear that there could be. Starting unusual/rare/etc. seeds has been a hobby of mine too, so if there are seeds available for me to try to start, I would be more than happy to spread any resulting seeds to others to revive the species. There is also a university botanical garden (University of British Columbia) nearby and another botanical garden (VanDusen Botanical Garden) nearby that would probably know a lot more about what to do with them in terms of propagating the species, or even return it to the wild someday. I can perhaps donate a seedling/plant or two (depending on the results) to them to take care of, and maybe they can confirm their genetic identity.
It should be hardy here too. A website from just across the border (around Seattle, USA) seems to indicate that they would be able to survive without protection here, though a bit more care might be prudent until I'm sure.
So exciting to hear the species might not be extinct!
Rene (Vancouver, BC, Canada)
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Welcome Rene!
Clubs and societies like SRGC and NARGS can do a lot to help keep old heritage or heirloom plants in cultivation.... it's one of the things having dedicated members around the world is a real advantage for!
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Welcome to the Forum Rene. I'm always interested in members who grow seeds, being totally addicted to them myself. At present I have no seed available (the plants are just coming through now) but there will surely be some in the late summer. If you PM me say in December, and send your postal address I can probably send something.
In fact, there now seem to be a number of self-fertile clones about or clones which will happily cross pollinate with others. One of the former has been registered as a PVR plant, in NZ as 'Pinot Noir.' I haven't come across this yet but recently bought another called 'Coco Chanel.' It seems there will be a few named forms available in time. This is fine I guess but I prefer to raise seed from my own and a friend's plants (she lives nearby and doesn't sow much now being in her mid 80s) because this ensures genetic diversity. I firmly believe that plants which are persistently raised from tissue culture gradually weaken. Another Forumist (Jandals) was telling me a few days ago that a very large quantity of fertile seed had been made available from a Dunedin source, to Jellito's in Germany, and we know that Thompson and Morgan in the UK have material they are working with, so I think the plant's future will be quite secure.
I like the fact that our seed raised plants show quite a lot of variation, smaller or larger flowers, redder or blacker but all with the distinctive bitter chocolate scent.
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Thank you for the welcomes. Sorry I haven't been back since October. Busy putting our little community garden plot to sleep for the winter and way too many other things.
I've always had the suspicion that tissue culture must degrade slowly with time too, but grape vines seem to be doing just fine by cloning so far, so I am hoping that is not the case. (We have our up and coming wine country in the interior of the province here.) Still, one reason genetic diversity exists is that it prevents existing species from succumbing to changing climates, new diseases, and so on, so clones aren't equipped to deal with changes.
It's good to hear that there is some effort to try to revive the species once again. It's a shame to have such a special species to be extinct in the wild (not that any other species wouldn't be missed too). Somehow I haven't dealt with Jellito's yet. T&M, of course, is a staple source :), especially since they've established a branch in Canada now. And, yes, I'm addicted to growing from seed too. I've become our community garden's de facto volunteer stock seed propagator and have many, many more seeds that I really have time to start (or space for).
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Anne, plants grown from your seeds and kept in a cold frame and protected, show little new leaves ; hope they flower next summer :D
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Well done, Nicole. I hope they grow on well for you.
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A timely reminder to me that I must put my own little ones under cover now as we've already had a couple of very light frosts. Not enough to damage my few dahlias but enough to burn the leaves of the courgettes. Must get JW's red dahlia away too. I stupidly sowed some old Cosmos seed in February thinking they may be TOO old by the coming spring but they all germinated within a week so I have seedlings which will need intensive care through the winter, which I didn't mean to.
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Lesley,
Goes to show that they may last a lot better than you thought. ;D I've always regarded the normal types of Cosmos as indefinite storage. I've definitely sown some years later and had them come up OK. I actually have a large envelope of mixed annual Cosmos and must sow some again in Spring. They're many years old, so it will be interestineg to see how they go in spring. 8)
This topic reminds me that I must purchase a chocolate cosmos again as mine has gone. Doesn't last long for me unfortunately..... didn't even see them in nurseries this year so they may gone out of fashion again. ::) Or I just missed them with everything else going on in life. :-\ Got to love the colour and smell. Is the dahlias you're talking about from the seed that was seedlings from wild seed of the red/black? I have one big healthy plant, but not had a flower on it yet. I broke one stem off it at one point and then discovered it had a bud on it..... darn thing aborted in the vase of course. :o I do so want to see what colour it is. ;D
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Paul,
Still around in nurseries. Want cuttings material?
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Rob,
Thanks for the offer, but given how bad my procrastination is right now, cuttings wouldn't be the best idea. ::) I am REALLY good at getting nothing done at present. :'(
I wonder whether they were up this way or not this year? I didn't get to a lot of nurseries, but still got to enough that I would have thought I would have seen them. I don't think I realised that they'd grow from cuttings? Makes sense when I think about it, but had not occurred to me before. :-\
Thanks again for the offer. I'm just concerned that right now it would be a waste of the material as I wouldn't get them done quickly, nor looked after properly.
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I've been trying to layer mine - when I dig them up later in the year I'll send something along if there's a surplus.
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Thanks Rob.
I really do appreciate the offer, just don't want to waste material at the moment.
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I hadn't thought of layering but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were amenable to that. They easily make roots around the leaf node area, as cuttings, so laid on the ground or a pot surface, they should do the same.
Paul the Dahlias I mentioned were handfull I've bought over the last couple of years, all reds and supposed to be dark red/black shades, for a particular purpose but all have been disappointing, brighter red than I wanted and tending towards cerise in some cases. I need to see the flowers at a Dahlia show and choose there.
This below is the one John Weagle in NS had some seed of. My seedlings were frosted last winter and I lost the lot but a single seed was apparently left in the pot and germinated in late September. This is it now and I'll need to keep it frost-free from now on. It's really a nice plant with smaller foliage, somewhat rough and hairy. I'm sure it too would grow well from cuttings. The only other Dahlia which I value highly, is 'The Bishop of LLandaff' and it too does easily from cuttings.
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Hello,
I would love to have some of this seeds...I like cosmos, but I´ve never heard of these, would be nice to try. What can I do to get some? Do you still have some seeds? Thank you.
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Hello Jaime, it's a bit late for this season. The Cosmos is finishing its flowering now and it didn't set much seed anyway due to a wet and cool summer I think. The little I have been able to gather is already on its way to the RBG, Kew. If you mention it again here or email me privately about next January, I may be able to help.
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Hello Jaime, it's a bit late for this season. The Cosmos is finishing its flowering now and it didn't set much seed anyway due to a wet and cool summer I think. The little I have been able to gather is already on its way to the RBG, Kew. If you mention it again here or email me privately about next January, I may be able to help.
Hi Lesley...thank you:) ,I will not forget. I understand, now it´s already too late...but next year ( next Summer for you) I´ll try if there is some seeds left. It would be an honor to try this cosmos, I think the climate here is not too harsh for them, as long as we give them some protection in winter frost...and water in high Summer.
Best of luck with your garden, thank you:)