Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
Bulbs => Galanthus => Topic started by: Melvyn Jope on June 05, 2011, 10:15:26 PM
-
During July 2010 I sent a bulb of G.reginae-olgae Fotini to a friend in the post using a padded envelope. Following its delivery he contacted me to say that to his dismay the bulb had been squashed and looked in poor condition. We agreed that he would treat the damaged remains with sulphur and return it to me. On its arrival back to me it became apparent that the basal plate had gone but the rest, although in a poor state, had not started to rot.
I decided to cut the bulb as though preparing for twin scaling, placed it in methylated spirit before placing in a bag with vermiculite. After waiting a couple of months there was no sign of emerging growth from the scales but they were intact so I decided to place in a pot in my usual potting compost. There was no evidence of growth during last growing season but this weekend when I examined the content of the pot I found the five small bulbs as shown in the photograph.
Two lessons for me from this experience, never trust a padded envelope alone when sending bulbs through the post and the second lesson, never give up just because there is of sign of a basal plate. I learnt several years ago to keep all parts of a bulb when twinscaling but then mine are not usually squashed!
I hope my experience with Fotini might be useful if any of you have bulbs damaged by narcissus fly or anything else.
-
Melvyn, I find these positive messages very helpful as well as hopeful and I expect others do,too.... thanks!
-
It's becoming more and more obvious that you don't need part of the basal plate for bulbil formation. Years ago I'd have chucked away a bulb with the basal plate rotted away, but not now. Bulbils seem capable of forming on any part of the bulb tissue.
-
Melwyn, Martin
thanks for the hopeful informations. Here is a next good thing.
Last year I lost a GREEN SPLITTER. His basal plate was destroyed totally. But the was a little hope on the outside of the bulb. I posted a pic:
-
This year there were no leaves. Now I was looking for the bulb. Not the same good results like Melwyn`s FOTINI with 5 bulbils. But two are also better than nothing.
-
Hagen, the other small bulbils which did not develop appear to still be there, but small and "dormant". It's possible that the two larger new bulbils became dominant, causing the smaller ones not to develop further. Perhaps if you now chop the bulb up into pieces with bulbils on each piece, the dormant ones may start to develop again?
-
Hagen, the other small bulbils which did not develop appear to still be there, but small and "dormant". It's possible that the two larger new bulbils became dominant, causing the smaller ones not to develop further. Perhaps if you now chop the bulb up into pieces with bulbils on each piece, the dormant ones may start to develop again?
That's what I was going to ask, too. Seems worth a try?
-
OK Martin and Maggi
let us start the second part of the experiment ;).
-
Hagen,
as I look at the 2010 and 2011 bulb I dont see much difference in the brown/rotted area of the basal plate.did you treat it before planting last year?
and as there were no leaves this year,how did the bulbils grow a bit,from the scale?
-
Hagen,
as I look at the 2010 and 2011 bulb I dont see much difference in the brown/rotted area of the basal plate.did you treat it before planting last year?
and as there were no leaves this year,how did the bulbils grow a bit,from the scale?
The bulbils will draw nutrients from the bulb scale (or basal plate if attached there) to enable them to grow larger in the absence of a leaf. Sometimes when a bulb has been chipped, some or all of the chips will develop new bulbils which do not make leaves the first year after planting, but the bulbils will still continue to grow larger in the pot by drawing on stored energy in the chip.
-
Loes, no I did nothing last year. I only put the bulb in a pot with a lot of vermiculite, like twinscales. The only power came from the scales. Now it is in the pot again, but i divided the bulbils from the mother.
-
The bulbils develop from the basal plates or from its remnants. What we see is a disc but it is actually a cone. Bulbils in the photos that appear at the mother bulb sides actually arise from the upper tissues of the cone inside the bulb. We see a rotten disc but the cone is not rotten.
Otherwise we could chop a bulb like it were an onion and obtain handfuls of bulbils, something that never happens.
-
The bulbils develop from the basal plates or from its remnants. What we see is a disc but it is actually a cone. Bulbils in the photos that appear at the mother bulb sides actually arise from the upper tissues of the cone inside the bulb. We see a rotten disc but the cone is not rotten.
Otherwise we could chop a bulb like it were an onion and obtain handfuls of bulbils, something that never happens.
Bulbils will develop on the broken-off top parts of lily scales, which I assume can't contain any basal plate tissue. Why could this not happen in other bulbs? I have had bulbils appear on small fragments of snowdrop scales and on rings of outer scales tissue cut across rather than down through bulbs. Are you sure that scale tissue with no basal plate can't possibly produce bulbils?
-
....and Lachenalias, for example, can be propagated from leaf cuttings; another case where a base plate isn't required.
-
Bulbils can form on a Eucomis leaf that has been cut off. Nature has many ways.
John B
-
We are talking about Galanthus (same to other amaryllids). That other forms of propagation are possible in other families does not prove otherwise.
-
We are talking about Galanthus (same to other amaryllids). That other forms of propagation are possible in other families does not prove otherwise.
What about when bulbils develop on the upper parts of snowdrop scales that have been chipped, away from the basal plate or basal plate cone, which has happened for me? Is it the case that there must always be at least some small amount of basal plate tissue attached to the scale - even just a thin layer of cells on the inside of the scale, to initiate bulbil formation? When bulbils form on the outside of a scale, as in Hagen's bulb and in my chips, does that mean that some remnant of basal plate tissue attached to the scale is sending chemical signals to the scale tissue "telling" it to form a bulbil?
-
Hagen, the damage/rot of the basal plate in your picture, suggests to me that there has been a Narcissus fly grub inside. It looks typical of that problem. When I've had similar, I've removed the grub - beastly thing - with tweezers and destroyed it but then I've thrown away the bulb. Your experience suggests I should have kept the bulb and tried something else. A lesson learned today. Thank you. :)
-
Yes, the scales must have a piece of basal plate attached to produce bulbils. If one keeps the two halves of an amaryllid bulb sliced horizontally, the upper half lingers on and gradually turns into a prune, while the upper half (if not soaking wet) will produce scar tissue and bulbils along it.
-
Hello Lesley, yes it looks like an attack of a narcissus fly grub. But it was`nt. The inner of the bulb was/is OK. I mean it were the damage symptoms of a slater or a centipede.
With a little good luck you can recover a n.f.g infected bulb too, if the bulb has big and not destroyed sidescales. But this is not often.
-
Alberto, Martin
may be
this pic can help?!
You can see twinscaled parts of a bulb. Also parts of the throat. All bring bulbils, or?
-
I was just about to say what Hagen has illustrated.... that the top part of a galanthus bulb will also produce bulbils. We have seen this demonstrated elsewhwere in the Forum on previous occasions.
If a bulb has the top section cut off to make it easier to chop or twinscale the bulb it is common practice to discard that portion but there is evidence from several forumists that the expereince Ian and I have had is quite usual... that the cut part, if treated in the same way as "regular" twinscales can also produce bulbils.
Since the scales of a true bulb are modified leaf bases (since they never extend above ground) they have all the inbuilt capacity to form bulbils. If the basal plate is extant then the bulbils will form there, in what is effectively the leaf axils. In the absence of a basal plate then other "dormant buds" on the scale structure can come into play and serve to produce bulbils there.
-
My experience has been the same as Hagen's and Maggi's, with bulbils forming on pieces of bulb scale (such as bulb tops. bulb top rings, and even small fragments of bulb scale) which I was sure were completely severed from the basal plate and lacking any fragments of basal plate tissue. I was trying to make sure I correctly understood what Alberto's argument was, but the only way that could be correct with galanthus would be if there was some kind of thin layer of basal plate tissue running up the insides of the scales all the way to the top of the bulb. Anyway, however it works, it does. I have successfully grown bulbils from all parts of snowdrop bulbs to flowering size.
-
No reason to doubt what you are showing. Puzzling.
-
My experience has been the same as Hagen's and Maggi's, with bulbils forming on pieces of bulb scale (such as bulb tops. bulb top rings, and even small fragments of bulb scale) which I was sure were completely severed from the basal plate and lacking any fragments of basal plate tissue.
Yes that has been my experience too, sorry to have missed this discussion as I was away, but your inputs are all most thought provoking. We must just be grateful in cases like Hagen's that we have not completely lost the plant.
-
Of course I went rightaway to available literature. My question was: why after the millions of experiments by the Dutch Bulb Growers Association laboratories chopping all parts of an amaryllid bulb is not even tried for bulbil production? The answer is yield: from a commercial point, the method that produces the more consistent number of hits is the established one. And chipping the lower half of the amaryllid bulb is the one that approaches the 100% mark.
Of course the alternative that you have found is very valuable as those very rare cultivars do not grow on trees, so to speak, and rescueing them this way is a great thing.