Chance seedlings result from open pollination in nature or gardens

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_seedling
A chance seedling is a plant that is the product of unintentional breeding. It may be a genetically unique individual with desirable characteristics that is then intentionally bred. Plants that come from the artificial union of gametes from a maternal and paternal source are not chance seedlings.
Identifying the parent plants of a chance seedling may be difficult. It may be necessary to genetically analyse the seedling and surrounding plants to be sure.
The Kindred Spirit Hybrid Oak, Granny Smith Apple, Lady Alice, Red Delicious and Braeburn apples are chance seedlings that were selected and assigned cultivar status owing to their desirable properties.

Hoya, Hoya seeds and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com Find all Aleyagarden posts on http://aleyagarden-blog.blogspot.com

Hoya monetteae , Hoya diversifolia : leaves and flowers

  The leaves of monetteae are larger

Left  Hoya monetteae leaves,  right Hoya diversifolia leaves

 

 

 

Hoya monetteae above has large white umbels.

 

 

Hoya diversifolia leaves and flowers

Hoya seedlings and species from the jungles

 

About the educational aspect of growing Hoya seeds : the slow emergence of Hoya seed exchange / trade is progressively casting a doubt on the pretended legitimacy of a certain kind of naming : contrary to what was rumoured on the internet a few years ago, we know now that Hoya seeds can be available, that most are not sterile, and finally that they may produce individuals with new traits. Hence it has become more difficult to believe, or pretend to believe in the purity of the lineages or the true identity of crosses, natural and hand made.


In other words we can now be more critical and suspect that some Hoya that were passed off in the trade as species from hardly accessible areas in remote tropical spots versus hybrids,  or controlled crosses versus plants of questionable origins are in reality merely seedlings with new traits that have been asexually propagated.

Marvel Comics' jungle-girl protagonist Lorna debuted in Lorna the Jungle Queen #1 (July 1953), published by Marvel's 1950s predecessor, Atlas Comics and created by writer Don Rico and artist Werner Roth.

 

 

 

Hoya, Hoya seeds and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Very few seed species need light, some seeds even find light a hindrance

It is a common misconception to believe that seeds in general need light to germinate : in reality very few seed species need light, some seeds even find light a hindrance and can only grow in darkness,  while most species germinate either in darkness or light.

Hoya seeds don't need light to germinate and to grow to a certain stage but they don't seem to be affected by light either. The percentage of seeds that germinate in the darkness of a closed zip bag between layers of humid toilet papers is not lower than seeds directly planted in soil.

Both methods require the seeds to be selected from the pods ( the " empty " seeds must be discarded ) and sown right after harvest.  

More on seeds and their darkness or light requirements :

http://content.ces.ncsu.edu/starting-plants-from-seeds.pdf
http://www.thompson-morgan.com/effect-of-light

On the picture the seeds of Hoya verticillata are showing out of the paper not because they were pulled by the light - they were in darkness 15 days and probably started to sprout a few days after being put in a postal box -. The condensation on the plastic bag may be a factor of their exit from the paper.

Hoya, Hoya seeds and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoya seeds : which medium is best for travel ?

Hoya verticillata variegata seeds anchored in toilet paper

Germinated seeds of Hoya verticillata variegata. I opened the zip bag 16 days after planting in humid toilet paper.

So they were 16 days without light in a closed and humid environment. Almost all the seeds have sprouted, they were selected the day of harvest ( and immediately planted to avoid fast dehydration, common with Hoya seeds ) : bad seeds from the pod, those that looked " empty " were discarded before the experiment.

This sort of paper is interesting : the seeds anchor in it easily and they can be transplanted with the paper they have attached to in transit without being disturbed. In this regard planting in a medium of peat moss instead of paper might cause more disturbance during the transfer ?

Worthy to note, seeds transplanted while still attached to their paper will find faster the upright position on the final medium.

Hoya verticillata seeds before transplanting to their final medium

Hoya, Hoya seeds, Orchid seeds, Ferns, Fern spores and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com
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Black spots on Hoya leaves : fungi or pigments ?

These spots resemble bacterial or fungi infections ( such as those described here  ) but on this picture they are probably a pigmentation that occured in the outer cell layers located at micro lesions done by insects. The pigments are known as anthocyanins, they occur in all tissues of higher plants, including leaves, stems, roots, flowers, and fruits.

On leaves they may act as a protection against high light stress. They may also act as antioxidants.

In http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC281624/#ref5 : " ..Foliar anthocyanins arise in a great diversity of plant species across a broad range of environments, often occurring in response to environmental stresses such as nutrient deficiency, drought, and low temperature (Steyn et al., 2002). In many species, anthocyanins are produced at specific physiological stages, appearing
in expanding, mature, or senescing leaves exposed to high light."

At the damaged points on the leaves the photosystems have been destroyed and they would liberate lots of free chlorophyll causing toxic free radicals and peroxide when excited by light; so the anthocyanins decrease the amount of light where free chlorophyll has been liberated.

In  http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2002-03/1016068714.Bt.r.html :

".. Destruction of leaf photosystems liberates lots of free chlorophyll, which if excited, produces reactive oxygen species including free radicals and peroxide. By filtering out blue and green light, anthocyanins prevent chlorophyll excitation, thereby avoiding toxic reactive oxygen.. "

Photograph by : Agnetha Wolgast Widell

The color of Anthocyanins changes with pH and they are generally degraded at higher pH; they are pink in acidic solutions, purple in neutral solutions, greenish-yellow in alkaline solutions , and colourless in very alkaline solutions, where the pigment is completely reduced.

More on anthocyanins

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Is light not the pull factor ?

These little Hoya verticillata seeds were so eager to grow while travelling long distances in their humid zip bags !

The picture was taken only 13 days after I collected them and closed the bag. Here we see some seeds that made their way through the layers of paper !

Since the bag was in the dark it is not the light that "pulled" the embryos from the inside towards the outside of the paper. Perhaps these seeds "knew" somehow that all the other seeds around would have left them too little space inside for their growth. Or it is the air between the paper and the bag that pulled the embryos ?

Apparently being moved when travelling from Thailand to Europe did not disturb their growth.

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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