Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Seedy Subjects! => Grow From Seed => Topic started by: Hristo on December 14, 2010, 08:13:58 AM
-
did you have any luck with the pyrolas?
Hi Cohan, I went all natural with the Pyrolas and sowed them into habitat tubs, tubs are woodsie soil filled moss/sempies/ferns growing with tuffa blocks upon which Haberlea, Ramonda, saxifraga and a few Chasmophytes grow. I sprinkled the Pyrola seed in here as the tubs are now well established and stay moist all year round, we'll see what happens, fingers crossed!!
-
Hristo, have you tried Pyrola seeds before?
I have ordered Pyrola and Chimaphila seeds and intend to sprinkle the seeds in my woodland. Don't know if this works. Have anybody tried?
-
I ordered a number from Krystl in the summer and am waiting for them to germinate. I expect them to come up like cress in spring!
I knew a great propagator,dead a while now, who grew moneses from seed to flowering many years ago so it is possible.
I should have added that I collected some soil/sand from an area with pyrola growing in it and have mixed this with my compost before sowing
-
Hi Hoy,
No this is a first try with Pyrola seed, I have heard that they require/appreciate a fungal symbiant as do orchids, others may know better than I about the validity of this. If true, sowing into an established woodland type soil would help as it may well harbour a suitable fungal partner. If the answer is no to the fungal symbiant maybe a similar approach to sowing hardy gesneriads would be a suitable approach. I edged my bets and sowed them in my tubs, I have orchids in them and gesneriads!!
Tony, how did you sow yours?
-
Thanks, Hristo. I have lots of fungi and toadstools here but i don't know if they'll do!
-
As mentioned above I mixed some soil from a site with them growing in it which was actually almost pure sand with a bit of humus in it with some bark compost and surface sowed. I did this in case a symbiotic fungus is necessary in the hope some would be present.I kept them warm all autumn but as nothing happened I have now moved them outside in sealed bags for the winter.
here is a picture of them growing wild about fifteen miles from where I live.
-
if there is a fungus necessary, it must be pretty common here- P asarifolia is very very common here, growing all over my acreage from open woods among grasses and forbs, mowed clearings, to dry or moist coniferous /mixed woods in semi to deep shade in moss or spruce duff, etc etc.. less abundant but still common in the same range of habitats is Orthilia secunda, P elipticala much less common but not rare, and Moneses is occasional-a good sized colony is on the north side of a lilac and sorbus, in a mowed area on the drier side of the acreage...
mind you, in the not too dry areas, we also commonly have platantheras and corallorrhizas,so there must be an active fungal life in the soil.. i wonder if decomposing wood would be a good source of what the seeds need as well?
i have not yet tried sowing any, but should get to some experimenting...
-
I have no pyrolas in the garden but they are common not far from here. I think I'll take some soil from there and scatter around where I sow the pyrola seeds. I have rotten wood of pine, spruce and hardwood too in the woodland.
You are luckier than me, cohan, I have no wild orchids yet but I am trying to establish some!
-
I have no pyrolas in the garden but they are common not far from here. I think I'll take some soil from there and scatter around where I sow the pyrola seeds. I have rotten wood of pine, spruce and hardwood too in the woodland.
You are luckier than me, cohan, I have no wild orchids yet but I am trying to establish some!
to be clear--the pyrolas etc are not really in my garden (although the moneses sowed themselves by planted shrubs) rather, most of my acreage is just an extension(interruption?) of the natural forest, and woodland/woodland edge species are native/self sown all over the land..
these are mostly not very exciting orchids that are on my land, though i have found calypso not far away on the main farm this acreage was separated from; unfortunately, that is a single plant, and flowers have not produced seed so far.. i used to see some other clumps on the farm, but there have been some changes in those spots, and i have not been able to locate them...
-
yes, calypso can be very picky. My brother, with 40 acres of forest
and field, moved a few of his calypso just a few metres, and they
did not like their new home.
He has no pyrola, though. It is something I have always wanted to
grow. I have never seen it for sale.
-
diane, if you are interested in pyrolas, i could easily send you seed, and even plants (i have them all over, including in places that get mowed or where i may want to plant other things, so its quite ok to experiment) -they might be a bit picky on transplanting,which, coupled with fussy germination, is probably why they aren't much available... but with care they should do it--might be a matter of figuring out when they are making new roots-they flower midsummer, and if i am remembering right, new leaves come after that, so maybe that would also be the time of root growth and best transplanting? i will have to experiment...
-
I have tried to move Pyrolas a few times but never succeeded. I think they root poorly or not at all in new places. Now I'll try seeds!
-
They produce underground stolons sometimes more than a foot long and these sub divide as well with the leaf rosettes at the tips. They seem to have no apparent roots however far back you excavate along the stolons which makes moving them difficult. The pieces can then take months to die having earlier making you think of success. I have observed that the flowering rosettes die anyway after seeding.
-
They produce underground stolons sometimes more than a foot long and these sub divide as well with the leaf rosettes at the tips. They seem to have no apparent roots however far back you excavate along the stolons which makes moving them difficult. The pieces can then take months to die having earlier making you think of success. I have observed that the flowering rosettes die anyway after seeding.
My observations too. Therefore I'll use seed - and hope for the best!
-
interesting...i will have to mark some plants to watch more closely.... i think there have (usually?) been green rosettes on stems i harvested seeds from, but usually they are in groups, so i can't swear to it, though i recall being careful not to pull up the rosette...
i wonder if transplants would 'take' with rooting hormone, or something more drastic like GA3?
maggi, do you think we have reached the point of needing a pyrola thread?
-
I transplanted Pyrola rotundifolia, Moneses uniflora and Orthilia secunda this year to my garden. The two former had very few roots, but maybe they´ll survive.
-
maggi, do you think we have reached the point of needing a pyrola thread?
Probably!
I'll fix that later today when (if ) I get back through the snow from work at the BBC!
Got a minute to do this before the programme!
-
interesting...i will have to mark some plants to watch more closely.... i think there have (usually?) been green rosettes on stems i harvested seeds from, but usually they are in groups, so i can't swear to it, though i recall being careful not to pull up the rosette...
i wonder if transplants would 'take' with rooting hormone, or something more drastic like GA3?
maggi, do you think we have reached the point of needing a pyrola thread?
Cohan
my experience is the flowering rosette dies several weeks after the seed is set and usually a new one is formed at the base of the old one on a very short stolon at the same time. No doubt new shoots are also making their way up from underground at the same time helping the plant to spread. I have noticed you can get clumps of pyrola rosettes in flower but the moneses tend to be spread apart. In the first moneses picture it is growing with the orchid goodyera
-
that is the time they are making new growth here as well, tony, so its probably that i simply never noticed the rosettes dying, since i have only looked at plants in a natural setting, even those all over my yard are there on their own terms..
P asarifolia sometimes will have several flower stems in a close area, but there can be large patches with only a stem or two... my patch of moneses under the lilac has a higher density of flowers, but then of course there is only one per stem, and still not every 'plant' has one..
i'll dig up some pics...
thanks maggi for straightening us out :) always working indefatigably (or as if indefatigably!) to keep things clear around here :)
hope the driving in the snow wasn't too awful!
chilly here today, but i see a glimmer of unexpected sun!
-
Always happy to help, Cohan.
Dirving wasn't a problem for me.... I don't drive!! It was the digging out of Verity the car that was the worst problem.... we slithered down the hill and got to main roads which were not at all bad..... wouldn't have liked to go "off piste" as it were.... that would have been less easy!
Ian was the chauffeur... He was on standby in case one of the experts couldn't make it into the studio but all was well, she arrived in a 4x 4 driven by her partner, so Ian could go off to visit his Mum.
All this has reminded me to take a good look this spring to see if my in situ sowings of pyrolas etc have been fruitful :)
-
Maggi, I wonder, when do you have time to garden? It seems you are very busy with many tasks and "proofreading" this site too!
-
Less time for gardening than I would like, Trond, but my work here and with the International Rock Gardener and other SRGC duties is a worthy "thief" of my time, I believe!
Luckily, I have my Head Gardener, Ian, the Bulb Despot, to do much of the work, leaving me to stroll around and love my rhododendrons! ;D
http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/index.php?log=bulb (http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/index.php?log=bulb)
-
Less time for gardeneing than I would like, Trond, but my work here and with the International Rock Gardener and other SRGC duties is a worthy "thief" of my time, I believe!
Luckily, I have my Head Gardener, Ian, the Bulb Despot, to do much of the work, leaving me to stroll around and love my rhododendrons! ;D
http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/index.php?log=bulb
Thank you for your work! Here's a rhodo greeting from me!
-
Less time for gardeneing than I would like, Trond, but my work here and with the International Rock Gardener and other SRGC duties is a worthy "thief" of my time, I believe!
Luckily, I have my Head Gardener, Ian, the Bulb Despot, to do much of the work, leaving me to stroll around and love my rhododendrons! ;D
http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/index.php?log=bulb
Thank you for your work! Here's a rhodo greeting from me!
i second that--i know its very easy in clubs for the masses to just assume that those who are doing the work always will and have nothing else to do with themselves! lets hope we are not guilty of that here ;D
-
Well, Cohan, thank you for your generous offer, but I think it's best
to leave your plants where they have put themselves.
Meantime, I've been reading. Linc Foster recommends sowing the
seed on sphagnum moss. He doesn't say whether that should be living
sphagnum. He also says he understands that a small Pyrola picta can be
dug up while in flower and treated as a cutting - ie planted in a pot of
sand.
Re the relations:
Linc wrote that Moneses has failed to grow for everyone he knows who
tried. It grows only under white pines.
He wrote that Chimaphila is propagated from cuttings
and he doesn't know anyone who has ever germinated any of the
thousands of tiny seeds.
Now, his mention of so many seeds makes me think of orchids. They
send out masses of seeds without benefit of endosperm if I remember
correctly. That's why they need the mycorrhiza.
So could that also be the case with these woodlanders?
-
Diane
whilst it may be true that moneses only grows under white pine in the US it is not the case elsewhere. In Scotland white pine is an introduced species and the moneses which is very rare there was growing long before its introduction. It also grows in Europe under other species of pine. Clearly it has adapted to its particular habitat.
The mycorrhiza question is interesting because it is the received wisdom that it is necessary for it to be present for germination.
I wonder if this has arisen
a. because nobody can germinate them and are thinking of a reason for the failure.
or
b.research has been done and it is true
You will see from my earlier posting that I have used some soil from existing pyrola's to mix in my compost. This I think is hedging my bets. No results so far but the seed is frozen at present.
-
Research has been done Tony, I have been very peripherally involved in some of it. New Phytologist has published several papers including this one. The introduction answers your question. Pyrola seem to be similar to Orchis, Dactylorhiza etc in that they rely upon mycorrhizae for germination but then can live autonomously but do still maintain a mycorrhizal association.
http://users.iab.uaf.edu/~lee_taylor/pdfs/MKendrick-Taylor-Ctrif.pdf
I hope the link works for the rest of you and is not restricted to those in academia. Let me know if you can't read it.
-
Thank you, Darren, the whole paper is accessible.
-
Darren
that's great,thank you. It will be interesting to read in detail.
Having read it!! it seems to raise a number of questions the main one being to me that it does not seem to be known if the same fungus will facilitate the germination of more than one species in which case it might be a waste of time using soil from a pyrola area on which to sow moneses or chimaphila.
I visited the nature reserve at Tentsmuir in the late autumn which was clearly the wrong time to find any orchids. It occurs to me however that the fact the Corallorhiza in the research were germinating and growing more strongly in the salix woodland might have been down to factors such as the moisture content of the area,it being wetter than the Betula area
-
I've read the paper too with great interest. Here I often find Corallorhiza in sphagnum bogs or wet spruce forests. Monanthes usually grows in humid spruce forests too and I often find huge populations in the subalpine spruce-birch forests in eastern Norway. 2010 was top year for Moneses here.
(The spruce is Picea abies and the birch is Betula pubescens ssp. czerepanovii )
-
interesting stuff, i have yet to read the article (off to work soonish...)
diane--treating the plants as cuttings is exactly what i was thinking, and i am wondering if the time to do is at/after flowering time when the plants are sending new growth...i will have to do some experimenting, as there are plenty of plants here (they get pulled up when raking leaves or weeding sometimes, and some are in mow zones, so i don't have to be overcautious--P asarifolia especially, that is..
moneses absolutely has nothing to do with pines here, there are none (well there could be one in a square mile, there used to be one on the far end of the family farm, i haven't been there in decades).. it is not abundant like pyrola or orthilia, but there are numerous small scattered colonies---often under picea glauca, which can be a moist or dry habitat here;
right on my 6 acres, i have found 2 colonies (there could be more, small colonies are very hard to find out of flower if they are among other vegetation as they usually are here except in dry spruce spots)--one is at the drier end of my property (top of a slight incline) below (north side of) a lilac and sorbus, dappled sun-the 'trees' have probably been there for a couple of decades at least, and the moneses grow among lilac suckers, grass and weeds like dandelion and clover; since i found them i have been trying to weed out the other stuff, hard without pulling up the moneses! and the other spot is a deeper shade spot in moss (and other plants) just behind-north again- a row of picea glauca, this is at the other, moister, end of the property..
the pyrolas and orthilias also seem to grow in both moist and dry places, deep shade and more open spots...
corallorhizas here are in moist to medium spots..interestingly, around where our sewer lagoon was dug in the early 70's is rather low, moist-wet soil with mixed woods (picea, larix, salix, betula, populus) and a strong population of C trifida has developed, which i do not remember growing up here (no association with the sewer, its not that near or specific)--the interesting thing is that the orchids continue up from the moist low natural soil onto the banks around the sewer which are -heavily overgrown with all sorts of vegetation- mostly clayish soil from deeper down, the organic topsoil all went into a separate pile... this clayey soil has had decades to build up a natural flora and microbial activity of course, but still has no appearance of loose organic soil...
-
i'm still going through summer photos, and i just happened to have a folder open with Moneses...lol
a few shots from the plants growing under the lilac...
here's what else was flowering around the place on that day:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/June292010Home#
-
Wellknown plants in an unknown setting. Thanks.
My camera refuses to take sharp pictures of white flowers! The autofocus choose something else - always! Have to wish for a new camera for Xmas....
-
thanks, trond--with these, the hardest part of shooting is to get down there...lol
i would have a hard time living without a selective focussing tool (using centre pinpoint for small flowers), and also setting light reading for pinpoint focus for flowers, often..
-
here is one i am not sure about, i should look it up in efloras...
it seems very much like P asarifolia, yet is distinct in leaf, in particular--most asarifolia here have slightly larger leaves than this form, and shiny and smooth, without the texture you see on these; flowers may be a bit darker on these as well, though i think there is variation in the regular asarifolia..
i have seen this leaf form a number of times, always in wet areas, usually at the edge of wet woods, or on hummocks in semi open wet areas with tall grasses, smallish salix, etc..
the full album for this site is here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/June282010APrimrosesSparrowSEggsAndMore#
a wonderful site, around 6 miles from home..
i still have to post some other shots from that day on my alberta thread..
last shot is a view of part of the site-the pyrolas would be along the fenceline under and just outside the small trees you see along the fence about 2/3 of the way into the image from the left... just on the border between a moist woody area, and the wet grassy area in the ditch..
-
Thank you for your work! Here's a rhodo greeting from me!
Merciful, that is a beauty. Does it have a name?
johnw - storm beginning just now. +4c
-
Thank you for your work! Here's a rhodo greeting from me!
Merciful, that is a beauty. Does it have a name?
johnw - storm beginning just now. +4c
johnw,
I am not sure it has a name! The problem is that I loose all labels and I got tired of filing my plants years ago!
Maybe it is 'Horizon Monarch', but I am not sure. I have 3 different but very similar plants in that bed. It can also be an unnamed cross from Glendoick, I have some of them too planted there, or something brought up from seed.
(I have about 300 rhodos in my garden, almost all different)
-
cohan,
A nice plant this pink Pyrola. I have never seen pink ones here, but I have read that there are some places. Pyrolas here are always connected with at least seasonally moist areas and never with very dry places. You often find them in spruce forests and also in willow thickets in the subalpine zone.
-
cohan,
A nice plant this pink Pyrola. I have never seen pink ones here, but I have read that there are some places. Pyrolas here are always connected with at least seasonally moist areas and never with very dry places. You often find them in spruce forests and also in willow thickets in the subalpine zone.
tks, trond--by contrast, almost all pyrolas here are pink! i have some that i think are P elipticala which has white flowers, but it is much less common than asarifolia--i don't think it is rare, by any stretch, but asarifolia is very common; i have been gradually finding more elipiticala, but out of flower, it is distinguished by a small difference in leaf shape-less round-more 'eliptical' i suppose! distinct, but only seen fairly close, and we know not every plant flowers, so even in the places i know it grows, i have to look hard to find them..i think it may be more specific in its habitat-so far i have only seen it in sort of open deciduous woods-which is an unstable environment here--this sort of place is likely to be grazed on farms (more so than coniferous darker forest with less forage) and over time will tend to be overgrown with spruce, anyway, so maybe this is why i don't see large colonies of elipticala..
asarifolia and and orthilia form larger colonies in moister spots-more medium than wet-but they do occur in dry deep shade under spruce as well..
-
some of shots of what i believe to be Pyrola ellipticala;
ironically, this year there seemed to be more (doesn't mean a lot! just more..) flowering stems than i have found in this area in the last couple of years, but there was fairly heavy hail (small pieces but a lot) just around that time, so the flower stems i found were mostly cut off at the lowest couple of flowers, and or bruised..
this hail came on a cool evening with a couple of cool days after, so in shady places, the hail stayed on the ground for hours or even a day or more in some spots--this caused frost damage on top of the physical damage--i lost some seedlings in pots as well (not pyrola seedlings)..
i only noticed now looking at these photos that some have red flower stalks, and some are all pale green...
-
cohan,
P elliptica seems to be a cute little thing!
You had hail - we had unseasonal late frost damaging many plants. In the high elevations, that was, should think those plants could take freezing but it was really cold.
You love exploring the plants do you :)
-
tks, trond--yes, a nice plant, and of course interesting to me because its white, and pink asarifolia is everywhere ;D
we have had two cold summers here, there was frost in nearly every month (we might have got about 6 weeks without, right here, but other places in the province had worse luck, crops damaged etc)..no effect on native plants, nor the few exotics we have here, but the hail was damaging to some things (we usually have hail several times, but not all heavy)--some leaves are unaffected, most natives not easily damaged, but this one was hard on small forest species because it gathered so much on the ground..
funny, i have a cultivated lonicera, leaves are always damaged by hail, but it was still flowering when we had already had frost for weeks, below -10C....
yes, i love exploring--i have only been back here since summer 07, and i am still finding new (to me) species even in this small area, and finding species in more places--plus riding my bike around the area, so i found several new things this year :)