Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Seedy Subjects! => Seed Exchange => Topic started by: robg on November 29, 2014, 08:49:57 PM
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I'm doing some of the Wild Collected Seed, and have run into a problem with two members of the Allium family that appear to be bulbils rather than seed - those of you familiar with the seed exchange will know that bulbils, as 'live' material, cannot be sent outside the EC and the packets need to be identified.
I was fairly comfortable that what is purported to be seed of Allium Oleraceum is bulbils, but I then opened a packet of Allium Roseum and they appear to be bulbils too - my confidence in my previous diagnosis was then somewhat rattled !
Can someone come to my rescue please.
Rob
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Mark the individual packets as 'BULBILS', Rob, and note what you have found on your returns sheet. I would use red pen and block capitals to highlight his to the team.
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Thanks David - I realised after I'd posted this query that of course they were bulbils because they varied in size - doh !! Marked up as you suggested.
This is the first time I've done packeting so it's a different ball-game to doing the Distribution. The trouble is that if the donor does not identify as such to Stuart, then he would have to go through every incoming packet to spot that they were bulbils. Perhaps he should do that for Alliums, but maybe it is reasonable to leave it to the packeter - just my luck to be the 'newbie' who catches it!! I'm sure this must have happened before though.
Rob
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Sorry, I forgot to write on the packets and in the list I sent to Stuart that these were bulbils, I only sent an email to mention it but I was late. Rob, I' also a newbie as a donor, I will try to be better next year ;-)
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Bother! That's one of my first choices I won't be getting! We can't have bulbils sent to us in Australia (and little chance of them "turning around" anyway!). Maybe someone who gets the bulbils will one day donate seed from them ;D
cheers
fermi
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I have also wild collected seeds of Allium oleraceum (it grows wild in my garden ;D)) but only one seed of Allium roseum (and I havesown it). I went to southern France this spring but it was blooming and I only collected few more bulbs. I hope to get some seeds next year.
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Bother! That's one of my first choices I won't be getting! We can't have bulbils sent to us in Australia (and little chance of them "turning around" anyway!). Maybe someone who gets the bulbils will one day donate seed from them ;D
cheers
fermi
Hi Karaba - forgiven. Just the luck of two newbies!
I've done the Distribution for years but now that Edinburgh have passed that on, I've taken up packeting. I should have had no problem spotting bulbils, but getting two in a row threw me initially.
Rob
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Hi guys - back again with another query.
The wild seed has two donors of Anemone Occidentalis -- and the seed is different. One packet is pale brown seed with long tails, the other about the same size but clearly darker in colour and no tails. Has anyone got any knowledge of the seeds of this plant? Otherwise what do I do?
Cheers
Rob
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One have maybe removed the tail... (I have done this with Dryas and Pulsatilla vernalis and alpina...) and the color is sometime different depending on the maturation of the seed when it has been collected.
Here's a picture of the seed : http://science.halleyhosting.com/nature/cascade/5petal/butter/anemone/occidentalis.htm (http://science.halleyhosting.com/nature/cascade/5petal/butter/anemone/occidentalis.htm)
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The wild seed has two donors of Anemone occidentalis -- and the seed is different. One packet is pale brown seed with long tails, the other about the same size but clearly darker in colour and no tails. Has anyone got any knowledge of the seeds of this plant?
This sort of query is exactly why those of us in this forum have been working over some years to bring together a collection of photos of IDENTIFIED seed which can be used to help in these cases.
With 5500 seeds offered each year in the SRGC Exchange this is clearly a mammoth task - which would undoubtedly be made easier if those sending in seed they KNOW to be correct would also photograph the seed on graph paper and post it to our seed ID project, or at least pass such photos on to me.
This thread is the one I'm speaking of: http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=4426.0 (http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=4426.0) It is possible to search a plant name only in the Seed Exchange section of the forum , in order to refine the search.
Sadly, Anemone occidentalis ( syn. Pulsatilla occidentalis) is not included- as yet!
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Thanks Maggi - that's been a useful trigger to make me aware of this facility and perhaps some others as well.
I do just wonder how widely your efforts are known as in all the years of doing the Distribution no one has mentioned this (that I can remember ::) ). Certainly when packeting your efforts will be a help.
Rob
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A travesty that no-one has mentioned it in the Seed Team - it is something that I have been working on for years and Ian and Carole do know about it. Originally it was something that was hoped to be a project that we would work on with NARGS and AGS, but I think the SRGC is the only one doing anything- unless those others are also working, but "secretly"!
Ian Pryde has also been experimenting with macro photography of the seeds for the project. . We have nearly 750 seed pix on our lists from the Forum. I have heard nothing from the other organisations.
We also give links in the Seed ID page and it's "reply" page to various sites where good photos of seed can be found - some of us are putting effort into this!
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Hi guys - back again with another query.
The wild seed has two donors of Anemone Occidentalis -- and the seed is different. One packet is pale brown seed with long tails, the other about the same size but clearly darker in colour and no tails. Has anyone got any knowledge of the seeds of this plant? Otherwise what do I do?
Rob, similar happened last year, see this http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=12125.msg310040#msg310040 (http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=12125.msg310040#msg310040)
They turned out to be Anemone megallanica
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I was one of the donors of wild-collected Anemone occidentalis - the seed I sent had the long tails intact. Here's a photo of seed from the same small collection:
[attach=1]
The plant is pretty unmistakeable in seed:
[attach=2]
As said, unless the seed is quite different in shape/size, it may just be that the tails were clipped off?
:)
(P.S. I would submit photos of seed of verified ID but as you can see, I always have problems with lighting in the photos. :-\)
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Lori, the habitat shot is a real charmer- so many Castillejas, too! 8)
May I respectfully suggest that a well- ID'd photo , even with lighting "issues" is definitely more worthwhile than no photo! :)
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Okay, I'll work on it, Maggi! :)
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Thanks, Lori - that's great.
[attachimg=1]
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Hey, guys this is much more than I expected !!
Lori - I can identify your seeds (you are No 22 in the Seed List and that is on the packet).
It could well be that the 'other' packet has had it's tails removed, but why the effort for something like 50+ seeds ? All that has done is to create confusion. The seeds do look similar and there is a short tail on each one that ends abruptly suggesting they've been cut off. I don't know if there is any value in asking Stuart Pawley to encourage or discourage this practice.
I think what I will do is to put a proportion of each seed into each packet, and put up a post here headed 'Anemone Occidentalis seed' with a link to this thread.
Many thanks to all.
Rob
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Rob, many countries will prefer the seed with the "tails" cit off, since they can regard those as being "chaff" and not part of the seed. Also, large packets with such tailed seeds are very bulky - something Stuart has complained of in the past! :-\
The people trimming tailed seed are doing their best to ensure their seed is acceptable anywhere, I think.
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Many thanks Maggi
That saves me doing another post then.
I think Ian Pryde's 'Idiot's Guide' needs a updating to include that information and also a pointer to your seed bank photos.
OK, the matter has been aired but memories are always short so if Stuart has written something on seed tails in the past, it needs to be repeated so that people like me don't waste their time and that of other members addressing something that should have been circulated by the packing organiser.
Cheers
Rob
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The people trimming tailed seed are doing their best to ensure their seed is acceptable anywhere, I think.
That's the case for me. I've read this http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/seed/news/Seed+Cleaning+Made+Easy/17/ (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/seed/news/Seed+Cleaning+Made+Easy/17/) and one or two other things and try to send seeds as clean as I can. And It's quite a pain in the neck to winnow bad seeds by blowing or to remove all this fluffy thing of Eriophorum, Salix ad Epilobium seeds but I've done it ;D
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I have also wild collected seeds of Allium oleraceum (it grows wild in my garden ;D)) but only one seed of Allium roseum (and I havesown it). I went to southern France this spring but it was blooming and I only collected few more bulbs. I hope to get some seeds next year.
My experience of some years ago is that Allium roseum can be a shocking weed, as it increases from bulbils formed on the old flower head, as well, presumably from seed. If growing these, do it in a pot!
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Surprisingly, considering their paranoia about seeds, NZ's MAF are quite happy to accept Pulsatilla with tails attached. Or Anemone, as in this case, though I've always had it (briefly) as P. occidentalis.
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As a seed packeter for NARGS, and in regard to pulsatilla in particular, it is not so much the bulk that tails present as a difficulty, rather it is the even more tedious task of handling seed while the tails are still attached. Separating viable seed from unfilled seed is so much faster and easier when tails are removed. Working with Pulsatilla seed for many years on the seed ex, I can say that good seed does not necessarily mean they originally have much of a tail at all, and even seed from the same individual flower may have different tail lengths. I think most people eventually discover, too, that there is no need to physically cut tails: there is a natural break point near the seed where the tail will easily snap off (pictured below). I might add that for many Pulsatilla species (notwithstanding occidentalis), performing this task in the field is often quick and easy, removing most of the tails all at once from each seed head, by grabbing all the actual seeds in one hand and breaking off the tails in bulk.
[attach=1]
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Here's some picture to illustrate viable and unfilled seed from Rick's message with Pulsatilla vernalis. It's not really easy to see the difference on a picture but in reality, it's (quite) easy.
1 : viable seeds
2 : unfilled seeds
3 : viable seeds without tail
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The same with Pulsatilla alpina alpina
(I hope that seeds are viable because those are the ones I have sent to the Seed Exchange ::)
1 : viable seeds with tail
2 : unfilled seeds with tail
3 : viable seeds without tail
4 : unfilled seeds without tail
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Hard to tell from the photos I suppose but the seeds in that last picture Karaba, look pretty much fertile (filled) to me.I think I'd be sowing those "just in case."
Of course this whole subject and its various posts applies equally to Clematis.