Can anyone identify this red climber

Hi all,

In order to show you the picture of this red climber I spotted today, I need advice on how to download my pictures directly onto this thread, rather than posting some link...

George

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Picture 1

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Picture 2.

Here you can see the size of the flower relative to my hand. The flower has a very very faint tea scent.

The plant has canes that arch up to about 2 metres.

The silky velvety petal texture and the purity and vividness of the red colour made me take this flower as well as one OP hip which contained 3 viable embryos (now incubating!!).

George

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Don Juan?
There are so many red climbers with hybrid tea flowers... they tend to be generic looking by now.

Maybe if you posted pics of the whole bush and individual shots of the leaves and sepals...

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Don Juan gets a purple tone in the summer heat.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

I've never seen Don Juan with that light a color/that unsaturated a red. I grew several in New Orleans (zone 9/10) and there, in that heat the petals were much larger than in the photo.
Did the climber Red Fountains ever get imported into OZ? When it was first patented, it was a major seller and I had it in Houston where it bloomed better the one or two winters we had temps below freezing, but not so much as to damage the unprotected canes. It's been around maybe 25 years which is long enough for the name to be lost, but for established plants to come into their own.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

I was thinking, 'Red Fountain' too Ann, or possibly, 'Paul's Scarlet'.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Yeah, the petals definitely look pre-1980s.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Enrique, here is a picture of a tiny cutting I made showing leaf size..there were 5 leaflets here. The terminal leaflet has been cut out, and two leaflets have been cut in half, to help strike the cutting...

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Enrique, here is a shot of the sepals for you...

Picture 4...

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Picture 5...

I have seen the colour deepen to crimson at other times of the year.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Anne, I am not able to find "Red Fountain" in the catalogue of Australia's largest rose collector and supplier of budwood, so this may rule it out?

Enrique, apparently "Don Juan" has a pretty strong fragrance according to HMF- this rose has only a mild hint of tea/fruit.

Paul-N-R, "Paul's Scarlet Climber" is available in this country, however I would not say that the flower of this unknown plant is large nor does it have particularly large leaves, and the canes are not thornless (as is suggested in HMF about P-S-Climber). Also the flowers are sparse and not reminiscent of a floribunda/polyantha in their production. It seems to behave more like a climber with the odd flower here and there.

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Sorry, Paul-N-R should read Robert-N-R!!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Sorry, Anne should read Ann!!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Roses come and go like fashions.

Just because a variety isn't available today doesn't mean it might not have once been common.

A great many roses that were once common are now extinct or nearly so.

Many live on unidentified in miscellaneous gardens, yards, cemeteries around the world.

Roses are becoming more and more a disposable commodity, sadly as are rose hybridizers.

The likes of Ralph Moore and his ilk are long behind us.

IMHO

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Robert-N-R, very wise words...

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

The flower has sat in the room overnight, and today is very warm..now the fragrance has changed from a hint of scent to a moderate tea/fruity scent, but it is definitely not strong.

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Since I have nothing better to do with my day today, here is a picture of the embryos, just before they were "cultured".. I have one more than I originally thought!!

I hope to have 4 seedlings in about 8-14 days time.. lets see.. Sometimes they develop green leaves and a stem, but are recalcitrant when it comes to forming an actual rootlet.. I think this may be one reason some embryos fail to escape their achene "encosure"...

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

"Climbing Dublin Bay"??

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Although earlier I mentioned I had not seen a floribuunda-type display on it, (just the occasional flower here and there) the more I think about it the more I realise this actually doesn't mean anything..maybe the plant is in decline and the flower display is just not as good as it could be...

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

The colour of the flower as well as the central golden stamen display do hint of an Altissimo parentage, I think?

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

>> I hope to have 4 seedlings in about 8-14 days time

George, how are you 'culturing' the embryos once you extract them?

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Hi Don.

I clean out a jar (eg. baby food jar), and then stand it upside down to get the water droplets to all roll out. Then I blow into it some exhaled breath to get a little fogging happening, and then place the embryos inside, and seal the jar with its lid. I keep the jar indoors in a well lit room away from direct sunlight. Every day I open the lid and refresh the air by blowing into it gently.

It's cool to be able to actually observe the transformation into a rooted seedling just beside the computer station!!

The picture below shows a close up of one of the above four sibbling embryos, now at day 2....You can see the cotyledons are starting to spread apart.

All the four babies from this hip of the red climber are doing well, and they should all be in soil in 2 weeks happily enjoying their new life in this world.

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

George, if you send me your email address I'll forward you some potentially useful information on culturing your embryos.

All the Best
Don

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Email address sent to you Don.

George

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Don, I have read the material you sent. I just sent you a follow-up email regarding this, using the direct "email" function here.

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

For those that are interested, here are the embryos today- day 4 of their life in the jar!

Notice the one on the bottom left is a tricotyledon.

No palm readings please!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

"No palm readings please!"

Your life line has a lot of green in its future... :)

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

George, how do you remove the embryos from the achenes? I had trouble removing them without damaging them.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Hi Jim.

You need to sacrifice a lot of seed and practice practice practice practice.... You must also have very good near vision, and a steady pair of hands.

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Hi again all....

Just for fun, here is the fastest of the four embryos (now day 5)...

I am almost tempted to plant this one today, but I think I will give it another 24 hrs, and plant it tomorrow.

Have a nice day/night all....

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

How many days did it take for you to get those seedlings from those embryos?

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Enrique, so far it has been 5 days (read above history).. Three of the four embryos shown in this thread have now developed green leaves and rootlets, but one of them has yet to go fully green and is very slow to change..It too should start to germinate soon, as I can just see a hint of green coming onto it as I look at it right now.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Wow.
I guess it is really easy then.

I will purchase the supplies tomorrow online. I have several OP seeds of my kordesii X basye's Amphidiploid seedling (it has very large easy to handle seeds.)

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Enrique, if this is your first attempt at extractions, practice on seeds you don't care about until your strike rate approaches 90% .....embryo-ok-in-seed/embryo-ok-out-of-seed.

This type of result took me more than 100 attempts to acheive I am sure.. It is not that easy!

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Day 6 of embryo 'culture'...

The tricotyledon at 3 o'clock is not quite ready to plant, but the 5 o'clock and 9 o'clock seedlings are going into seed raising mix now. I will plant them with the cotyledons exposed to the light and air.

The 12 o'clock embryo has a very dense type of leaf structure all wrapped up like a cabbage into a tight conical form. The small hook-like extension towards its top right is the growing radicle.....it will be interesting to see its final morphology. Sometimes, the cotyledons are so large that they are actually folded onto themselves to maximise surface area to volume.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

So what kind of tools do you use to crack the seed coat and what tool do you use to separate the embryo from the seed coat? Do you stratify the seeds first or do you do this after they are removed from the hips?

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Adam,

I use a very sharp box cutter type knife, my two bare hands and a cutting board from the kitchen. Seed is freshly picked off the bush, and immediately cultured after extraction. Stratification is not reqired at all.

Disclaimer.....Anyone that wishes to try this idea of mine assumes their own personal responsibility for finger cuts and other personal injuries which may occur.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

George,
I can't begin to express how much I've enjoyed watching these seedlings come along. It's been a joy.

For us in North America, there's a product offered by Lee Valley tools that's a finger wrap that can't be cut into. It's both reusable and it does work (I've used it when I was doing woodworking and unsure of myself with a new carving tool.) I will wrap my endangered fingertips before I try some rescues.

Link: http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=31213&cat=1,42207

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Hi Ann.

These two slow-coaches are typical of what I mentioned earlier about some embryos being a little recalcitrant to throw a rootlet from their developing radicle/stem.

You can see the tricotyledon embryo very clearly in this picture. The other sibbling in this picture seems to be expending lots of its energy in trying to unfold the tightly folded cotyledons...Maybe they are going to be BIG.....

Their two sibbling which were potted up a few days ago are doing ok.

Take care all,

George.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

George, your posts on this thread have me dying from cuteness overload =/

Good work :)

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

George
Could you give more detail on your extraction method
All my attempts so far have ended in disaster so any tips on where to start and what to look for would help.
I can find plenty of seeds to practice on but I would prefer to practice doing it the right way.
Russ

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Something else that hits me with this. You're handling these seeds and they aren't / don't appear to be the worse for the wear and tear of being handled.

Those cotyledons are greening up still without direct sunglight?

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

>> You're handling these seeds and they aren't / don't appear to be the worse for the wear and tear of being handled.

I think that's interesting too.

>> Those cotyledons are greening up still without direct sunglight?

The light-dependent step in chlorosynthesis only requires a single photon per molecule so ambient indoor lighting is sufficient. Photosynthesis, which is then using that chlorophyl to produce sucrose for plant growth, takes all the light that you can throw at it.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Hi all.

The picture below is of the type of box-cutter knife I use in embryo extractions.

When I first started playing around with this idea of mine (early 2009), of course I was slicing into and squashing a lot of embryos. In order to get high percentage intact embryo extractions, I realised it was important to define the long axis of the seed with a few initial key slices. Sometimes it was easy to guess, other times a little more slicing was required to define the long axis orientation of the seed within the achene.

After you get the long axis defined in your head, you then slowly slice away at the hard achene in a direction along/parallel to the long axis of the seed, until you have removed enough achene to identify the cotyledon end of the seed. Now you can slowly extend the attack to remove the entire cotyledon end of the achene.

Soon enough you will end up with the radicle end of the seed buried into what is left of the radicle end of the achene. At this point, a few gentle wiggles on the seed with your box cutter blade usually dislodges the seed out. If it fails to dislodge easily, then a few more careful slices on the achene remnant should do the trick. Damage to the radicle is to be avoided at all costs, so this is the critical and most defining few cuts you will be making....(damage to the radicle spells embryo death).

I then place the seed with its seed coat into a glass of water for a while until it visibly hydrates a bit (it gets firmer and shinier). Sometimes if you are lucky, the seed coat has been sliced a little through the achene removal, and the embryo pops itself out through this slice in the glass of water..(this is very time saving when it happens!!!).

Most of the seeds however have a pretty much undamaged coat if you have been "good at it", so they require extraction of the seed coat. In such seeds, I then proceed to remove the seed coat by making a very superficial side-ways slice at the cotyledon end of the seed coat, to just reveal the pearly white surface of the embryo underneath.

I then slowly nick away and pull away the seed coat with the box cutter blade, always avoiding getting anywhere near the radicle end. The seed must be handled delicately yet purposefully with the fingers of one hand, whilst using the cutter with the other hand to unfurl/peel away the seed coat layer. Much care is required to not squash the embryo here with the fingers holding it in position. Sometimes the embryo pops out at a critical point of losing most of its seed coat. However, in other cases it does not release itself easily, in which case I do not remove any more seed coat if it is nearing the radicle... Instead, I immerse the semi-extracted embryo into a glass of water until it finally pops itself out.

An advantage to using the box-cutter is that you can slice at short/acute angles which gives you very good control of where you direct the forces, to avoid crushing the embryo underneath. The knife must be very sharp of course, otherwise you will be forcing it too much to make the cuts, and thus risking blunt force injuries to the embryo within.

I hope this explanation is easy to follow.

Have a nice day.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

George it is wonderful of you to take the time to spell out your procedure and show us the results of your work.

Years ago there was a unique specimen of R. laevigata that grew at Sequoia Nsy. Mr Moore referred to it as, "Wayside Laevigata". Apparently he has somehow recevied it as breeding stock from someone at Wayside Gardens sometime earlier. It had exceptionally heavy and leathery leaves. Ironically is was heavily infected with RMV.

While it readily set hips the seed wouldn't germinate. Mr. Moore apparently never got anything out of it.

A friend from upstate NY and I visited Sequoia one Fall and he took some of this seed home and used embryo excision to grow out one of the seedlings. I think he nurtured his on an agar solution.

I have that seedling here now and have used it in hybridizing. This is the laevigata I have used to make my hybrids. It's extremely vigorous and also roots extremely easily.

I think embryo excision could be very useful when we get a cross that forms seed but wherein the seed won't germinate.

This happens relatively frequently for me and I'm sure for others as well.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

This also has the potential to answer the question, should we just toss the floaters?

Not off topic: the knife that George uses is available in North America (or at least was available 15 years ago) at stores that sell supplies for doing wallpapering. It is used for cutting wallpaper and the snap off allows easy switch to a sharper edge quickly.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

This type of knife is readily available at home improvement stores everywhere.

I use them for budding. They are cheap and and as Ann mentions, the blade can be renewed over and over by snapping off the old section.

I've tried telling others about this repeatedly. I was shot down when I made this suggestion years ago at Rosarians Corner. I still don't see the logic.

Some opt for expensive alternatives. I don't know why anyone would go the expense of acquiring a budding knife and trouble of sharpening it over and over.

Snapping off the old portion even helps avoid spreading infection.

Give me some old pencils and a utility knife and I am good to go. Frugality and convenience are the Mother of invention.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

I forgot to mention that I never toss floaters. I agree with Paul Barden. It's just as easy to sow all the seed from any given cross. Some fertile seed floats. That's a fact.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Hi Robert an Ann!

It is great sharing this here with others. More fun for all I say!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Robert, I agree with your comment about the floaters/sinkers test being unreliable as a test for good or bad seed.

I always extract all the seeds, floaters or not. I have observed many cases where the floaters had viable embryos particularly in small seed like multiflora, but also in all other seeds as well.

I have observed many cases where the seed looked big bulky and it also sank, looking very promising indeed, and then surprising me by revealing a dead embryo inside upon extraction.

The adage 'never judge a book by its cover' is so true when it comes to rose seed.

Discarding "seed-floaters" is a waste of time, and worse still, means that one day you could toss out that one-in-a-million rose you have been working towards!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

Robert, I also FULLY agree with you about the utility of this knife.

Apart from using it in rose embryo extractions more recently, I had been using the same type of knife for all my budding work, ever since 1993 (T-budding, chip budding, and even a modified form of patch-budding using only the one blade instead of a double blade system).

It is truely an old friend to me!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

SLOW EMBRYO-1 @ DAY 14 OF "JAR CULTURE"-

The radicle of this tricotyledon is curling around like a snail... In fact any of you that know about the anatomy of the human inner ear (cochlea and the 3 semicircular canals), will see a remarkable resemblance to this confuguration!!!!

No rootlet has emerged yet.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

SLOW EMBRYO-2 @ DAY 14 OF "JAR CULTURE"-

Here, it appears that a rootlet may be forming as a straight projection from the curled radicle.

The leaves are becoming more defined, but they are still wrapped tightly in this weird cone-like mass.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

FAST EMBRYO-1 @ DAY 14 OF LIFE-

This seedling was planted only 6 days after extraction from its seed. The picture was taken this morning at day 14 of its life. Note the true rose leaf.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber

FAST EMBRYO-2 @ DAY 14 OF LIFE-

This is the other fast seedling of the 4 babies that came from the same hip. It too was planted day 6 post embryo extraction. Like it's other fast sibbling (pictured above), it too has grown a true rose leaf. This picture was also taken this morning (day 14 of its life).

Here the two faster embryos (now seedlings) are thriving in full morning sun, after such a short time in their lives!!

This demonstrates the awsome power of embryo extraction. It also shows how sibblings from the very same hip, can behave so differently when they are pushed to germinate simultaneously, in the same incubation environment.

Have a nice day all.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

By the way, the green things aroung the seedlings pictured above are snail pellets. These pellets have saved countless rose seedlings from devourment, judging by the number of dead slugs I routinely pick off the baits.

On a gardening show on TV last week, someone mentioned the use of gravel as an effective repellant of slugs/snails... Is this true of perlite? If anyone can confirm this is the case, I will certainly swap the perlite for the baits, as I hate all chemicals in my garden!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

As more "important" seedlings are emerging for me, I realise that I can use the limited pot space and jar space I have a bit more selectively.

So the demonstration of these 4 babies ends here, with a picture of the root development of the two fastest (at day 14 post embryo extraction).

All 4 are in rose heaven now, but the GOOD thing is that they helped some of us understand some of the secrets of rose embryo growth.

Too many seedlings..too little space, alas!!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Very informative George, thanks so much for the summary. As I am cleaning my seeds every once in a while a seed will split open and I can usually take out the brown seed inside it, but sometimes the radicle is very much attached to the achene and this is where I have a problem, so I am so glad that you posted this to explain how to get the seed out without destroying it. Thanks again

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

No worries Jeanie.

Thankfully most rose seed is just big enough to allow most of us to easily have a go at this, if we so desire, in a very low-tech manner, and with next-to-zero expense.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Here are some additional tips for rose seed embryo extractions...

After getting good at removing the rose seed from its achene, the next major hurdle is to get confident at nicking/peeling away the inner seed coatings that tightly bind the pearly embryo.

Here is where apples can come in handy....First, get some apple seed, and peel away the outer shiny black layer of the apple seed to reveal the inner seed with it's papery covering. This is not the apple embryo, it is the apple embryo wrapped with its seed covering... What you now have is pretty much a 'rose seed equivalent', without the time consuming achene removal step required to get to it!

You can use apple seed to learn how deep is not 'too deep' when it comes to nicking/peeling away the inner seed coatings without damaging the embryo underneath.

Try to visualise the seed as though it were an apple ready to be peeled. Start at one end (the cotyledon-wider end) and peel away in a circular fashion after making the first nick somewhere at the cotyledon end of the seed.

By practicing this way, you will gain confidence and overcome the natural fear of damaging the embryo. You will start to realise the relative resistance that these binding tissues exert when you apply a given force with your your box-cutter blade.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Great idea George, thanks so much.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

George:
I tried your idea of embryo culture this afternoon. I extracted four embryos from OP Henri Martin and five embroys of Chihuly X George Burns. I'll post the results in a few days under a new thread.

I tried this several years ago with Monterey Pine seeds. The method was a little different as I set up a pair of vice grips to just squeeze and crack the outer shell. The results were pretty good. I tried the squeeze and crack method with roses and it was a complete failure. I managed to smash a number of OP Scarlet Knight and launched several into the living room. I guess I'll see if vacuum cleaner dust works as a seed staring medium LOL.

You were sooooooo right when you said it requires practice. Thanks for the suggestion. I hope mine germinate.

Jeff

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

I think this method would be especially valuable in terms of trying to utilize those few seed that are sometimes produced by normally infertile cultivars.

There is a lady in Melbourne that posted some ripe hips of 'Gloire Lyonnaise' at HMF.

My specimen has never set hips but I really like what it has to offer genetically. There are no recorded descendants.

It would be fun to see if seed like this could be grown out and carried forward.

Link: http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/pl.php?n=2981&tab=36

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Hi all.

Jeff, if you extracted your embryos without damaging the radicle, then there is no reason that they will not germinate, and FAST! Good on you for trying, I am sure it will make your day.

I am also doing another little experiment at the moment to see if the whole thing can be made even easier..will keep posting here if anything new comes up..

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Pictures can take the place of lots of words..

Here is an achene (Iceberg x OP) that I just opened a few minutes ago.

As you may be able to see here, it was opened from a cotyledonary approach, after first identifying the 'polarity' of the seed by doing a few key cuts...If it is done really carefully, you can get this situation where basically a lid has been created and opened up! There is no seed, because it has been extracted out easily.

The bottom part of the achene on this picture is the closest end to you, and it is the wider cotyledonary 'pole'.....the radicle 'pole' appears at the top end of the picture, and is further away in the distance.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Here is the Iceberg x OP seed, as it appeared when dislodged from the achene shown above. A little bit of care in the slicing usually produces undamaged seed. This is the typical appearance of a viable seed.

If the seed looks black or jelly-like, it is dead!

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

More ponderings...

I clean the jars out with a tiny amount of household bleach plus dishwashing detergent prior to useage.

I would like to emphasise again however that the level of success shown here has been achieved with seed picked and incubated in the same 24hr period.

Using older/stored seed is not part of my experience here, as it defeats the whole purpose of getting the quickest germinations from harvest.

I do not know how stored seed would behave in contrast, but I suspect pathogens are more likely to show up, a problem I have never encountered in my 'jar culture' thus far.

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Also, I do avoid harvesting hips that are mouldy or showing any other signs of disease.

As far as I can, I collect hips at their earliest stage of maturity (ie. just starting to show a flush of color, or else where the sepals have started to dry out).

Re: Can anyone identify this red climber...JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Here is the typical appearance of dead rose seed (Iceberg x OP).

Only a small amount of slicing can reveal this bad seed, and it can be immediately discarded without a second more wasted on it!

This is another good thing about extracting, you can eliminate crap seed without having to complete the extraction.

JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

At the moment, I am experimenting on what happens when you culture fresh seed in the jar after it is extracted from the fresh achene. If this is successful, it means the whole second step of inner-seed-coat extraction can be done away with altogether!

The simpler the better!

Currently, I have a few such seeds (Iceberg x OP) culturing away in 'jar culture'.

I will report the outcome in due course, for any of you that may be interested in this.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Hi George

I sure hope this works for you, that second step of trying to get the embryo out of the seed coat is really a tough one to do. I was thinking of doing it like you have there but very, very gently also cutting a little slit along the side of it to assist it in coming out more easily on its own.

Also I have been washing my jars in the dishwasher but will use the bleach solution also.

Thank you so much for all the great info you are sharing, its great!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

I wonder,
I've been practicing this on openly pollinated Pride of Oakland seeds.

Can't get it right, extracting them...
But I wonder... what if I just nick them deep enough to the embryo... but otherwise leave the seed coat on.

and then plant them as normal.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

>>>I was thinking of doing it like you have there but very, very gently also cutting a little slit along the side of it to assist it in coming out more easily on its own<<<

Hey Jeanie.

A percentage of your seed coats will already have mico-abrasions of their seed coat, not easily seen upon dislodgment of the seed. This damage happens even when you are careful not to do damage to the seed with the box-cutter blade.

The micro-abrasions are the best thing that can happen, as already I can tell you some of my jar-cultured seed already has embryos escaping from such seed-coat defects!

I have a hunch that un-touched seed (post blade extraction) may have sufficient 'micro-damage' already there, to make any further seed-coat extraction unnecessary..

Let's see what happens in the next few days..I'll let you know!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE

Enrique, of course you can plant the seed and even plant the bare embryo 'as normal'..

I have planted seed extracted with the box cutter and with no cutting of their seed coat, (as well also planted bare embryo) in seed-raising mix, with all the nasty bugs it contains..... and germinations occured. Usually the germinations take 10-14 days, sometimes it takes a little longer. Certainly by 4 weeks no more germinations can be expected..

I used to do this, but realised I was losing too many of my precious subjects this way, so I went on to develop the jar culturing, and since then I have not lost one single seed. Culture in a jar is simple anyway.

The major obstacle really is in the seed coat extractions.. let's see how many of the seeds with all their seed coat untouched germinate in the jar sitting in front of me now.. needs a few more days!!

Re: JAR CULTURE OF ROSE SEED

Enrique, also, if you just go ahead and plant the whole achene with a bit sliced out of it (exposing embryo), in most cases, you will not get anywhere near the rapid results achieved with seed extraction or embryo extraction.

Re: JAR CULTURE OF ROSE SEED

Enrique, just to clarify, when I write "seed coat", I am referring to the inner seed coat of the rose seed, after it has been completely extracted from the achene.. I do not culture achenes or partially sliced achenes.

Jar-culture of rose seed (achene extracted).

This rose seed was jar-cultured 5 days ago, after first removing the achene with the box-cutter. The inner seed coat was deliberately left untouched. Voila!

Re: Jar-culture of rose seed (achene extracted).

That is so wonderful George, you did it! We now know we do not have to extract the embryo from the seed coat, it not only saves time but also our sanity.....LOL.

Re: Jar-culture of rose seed (achene extracted).

Hi Jeanie.

It also means some rose seed (achene exrtacted) that would have inevitably been killed trying to further extract the very delicate seed coat, will now have a good chance to germinate safely in a jar, or potting mix, or whatever else people's favourite germination system happens to be !

Have a nice day all!

Re: Jar-culture of rose seed (achene extracted).

Here, a clearer view of the same rose seed, as it currently appears in jar culture-

Re: Jar-culture of rose seed (achene extracted).

Here the same seed at 7 days post jar-culture. The crest of the looped stem is hidden inside the seed coat, and has looped out to reveal a rootlet. The cotyledons are also begining to open out.

The other seeds in this jar (which were also cultured without touching their seed coats), have less indirect damage to their seed coats from the box-cutter achene removal, and they too are germinating.

Have a nice weekend all!

Re: Jar-culture of rose seed (achene extracted).

Interesting that you and Don are running parallel threads. I have gone over what both of you have written and read over Don's information ( We site PDF File) several times. I have managed to destroy at least a hundred seeds of Honey Perfume and Scarlet Knight. But.........

I am seeing a few successful extractions show some green. I'm sure that a couple have mangeled radicals but the cotyledons are getting green, so I guess I'll wait and see. Four days seems to be the magic number of days for green to begin to appear.

I didn't use any type of treatments for bacteria/fungus and one jar turned to mush. Oh well. I like using the plastic baggie more than the baby food jar, but that's just a personal preference.

Thanks to you and Don for providing the information.

Jeff

P.S. My wife honestly believes that I have totally lost all sense of reality and she's blaming you and Don. :)

Re: Jar-culture of rose seed (achene extracted).

Hi Jeff.

Be careful to not damage the radicle, this really is the main reason the extractions fail and you get 'mush'.

I have finished my little 'blog' here about extractions, as it has become overkill!!

See you in other threads, enjoy rest of the weekend!

JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Recently I have discovered that if you remove the rose achenes from the hip, then saok them for a couple of days to remove all impurities and bits of hip, then air dry them for several weeks until the achenes are stony hard, then it is much easier to do the achene extractions. Extractions done on freshly collected achenes from a hip versus extraction done a few weeks later on the remaining stone dried achenes from the same hip have proven infinitely much more difficult for me, by comparison.

Part of this ease is to do with the easier handling of a dry seed in your hands (better purchase, less slipping), but also the blade of the box cutter cuts with greater efficiency and less need to recut/force the blade, as the dehydrated achene offers less elastic recoil force to the action of the blade. A bit like how it is easier to slice through a banana than a sponge (ok this is an exaggeration, but you get the point?!!). This means less pushing action when cutting, less re-slicing, and so less potential damage to the seed underneath....and so it is also much FASTER.

Only extra sharp previously unused box cutter blades are to be used for best cutting, there is risk of injury, I cannot accept responsibility for this...be careful or just don't attempt this if you are clumsy! Also it is best to keep others well away from your operating field, and wear protective eyeware, as occasionally even in the best of hands, seed flies in your face or around the place...(this happens less as you gain experience...LOL).

Another fantastic advantage to drying is that the seed within the achene has also dehydrated and shrunk in volume...but since the achene volume has not shrunk anywhere near the same amount, an air pocket develops around the seed..the drier the seed the more it's potential volume is replaced by air..This is an insurance policy because the box cutter blade sometimes slices into an air pocket where otherwise it would have struck seed if the seed were fully hydrated. So there is more room to negotiate the slicing without injuring the seed...very cool :0)

Dry achenes with this air pocket within them have also led me to propose something else in relation to why some viable achenes float....

Some achenes have dryer seed than others, for whatever physical reason (eg. extra leaky sutures, or more leaky achene shell)....the drying shrinking seed within such achenes has air replacing its volume as it shrinks. The more dehydrated and shrunk the seed becomes inside the achene, the more volume of air exists to replace the seed volume. At some point of this seed dehydration phenomenon, the buoyancy forces of the water around the achene become greater than the sinking forces as the achene becomes less and less dense...and flotation results.

So NEVER throw out achenes that float!!! They float because there is air in them......some are just achenes with dry viable seed and air pockets, while others are 100% air filled (contain no seed).

Oh, and by the way, if placed in a glass of water the very dehydrated seeds/embryos spring to life very very fast. Nature has it all worked out!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Oh while I remember, here is another improvement on the jar method of embryo culture:

Take the baby food jar you choose for the culture, and fill the bottom with an amount of water about half the thickness of a finger...then apply the freshly extracted (wet) embryos onto the side of the jar (they will immediately cling on to the side of the glass jar for many days as they grow, and they don't slip down until they put on weight, when it is time to plant them). Seal the jar with its lid, and you now have a 100% humidity chamber that needs no further fiddling!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

One last refinement.. just before closing the lid, exhale a few times into the jar so the glass fogs up all the way around and to the top, this way humidity is delivered immediately right up close and personal to the babies.

I find that smaller baby food type jars are the best, as they provide a superior seal thanks to their lid design. Also, the smaller the jar the more successful it is to maintain high humidity without much fussing about after the lid is closed.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Here is a picture of the final set up.

You can see just see a few ('R.Clinophylla' x OP) embryos happily clinging to the side of the jar, well away from the water line.. (Simon, of course these are the 'R.Clinophylla' you sent me via Viru in India..very cool..they just got put in this morning as most of them seemed only moderately viable, and so I had them swimming in water for 48hrs to try and rehydrate them maximally..some have started to open their cotyledons and thicken up from this pre-treatment, so there should be at least a few germinations....these were very tricky to extract as their achenes were very dense and the embryo inside was very thin and spindly, and when first extracted most were a dull off-white rather than the derised shiny pearly white).

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

BTW the jar size shown above easily accommodated all the 14 of these babies.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Simon, as you know, I got six 'R.Clinophylla x R.Bracteata x OP' species cross embryos from your Viru supply.

In contrast to the 'R.Clinophylla x OP' embryos, these showed excellent viability right from the start.

Here is one of them after 24hrs in culture.

Do I detect a little "greening" going on?!!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

The small baby food jar shown 3 postings above is very close to actual size, the real size being maybe 10% larger than what shows in this picture (I am assuming your computer screen is set to '100%' magnification).

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(R.Clinophylla x OP) 24hrs jar culture..definitely some of these poor quality embryos did respond to the extended pre-culture rehydration regime (immersed in tap water for 48hrs).

Here is the fastest of them:

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(R.Clinophylla x R.Bracteata) x OP, 48 hrs jar culture.

All six of these are just powering on, as predicted. I can only imagine what monsters thay are going to grow into.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

They get big. I had them here but gave them all away.

It's interesting to see the variety of seedling types. They tend to favor one parent or the other to some degree.

It's fascinating to see their development via embryo culture.

Btw, this seed germinates quite easily.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

This particular batch of ([R.Clinophylla x R.Bracteata)] x OP achenes should germinate very easily if planted directly as achenes judging by the ease of extraction (thin seed coat) and the vigour of the embryos.

On the other hand, I have a feeling the other species (R. Clinophylla)xOP achenes will probably be a tad less easy to germinate when planted out as achenes in germinating medium, but their embryos are marginally alive as the culture proves here..as I explained further up, their seed coat was very dense, nothing like the thin coat of the ([R. Clinophylla x R. Bracteata)]xOP achenes.

Having said that, I can't see there being any shortage of seedlings, even just from this lot that I have. I have no idea what I am going to do with them all!

Robert, which particular species from Viru are you referring to, when you say you gave them all away?

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

I've germinated both clinophylla OP, and clinophylla x bracteata seed here.

It all germinates easily and I gave them all away.

I'm not saying they weren't worth working with, I just had too many other things going on. I chose to work with Viru's derivatives instead since I had access to them.

As I've stated before, not to utilize the work of others seems in a way a discredit to their effort. At least that's how I looked at it in this particular case.

We can only spread ourselves and our resources so thin anyway.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Robert, did you get to test either/both of these species seedlings for seed setting fertility?

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

I tried working with clinophylla. It got huge. My specimen was about 12' tall after two seasons. The few attempts I made to work with it were not successful.

I discovered Powdery Mildew on some portions of the plant that were not getting good air circulation. That's when I decided not to work with it directly. I gave my vigorous clone to the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden. That's where Cass got her specimen.

Paul Barden's specimens were germinated independently.

Btw, a few of them were dwarfs. I think I gave one of the dwarfs to Kim Rupert.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Robert.. these clinophylla x bracteata OP seeds are Viru's work... based on his initialy clinophylla x bracteata cross selections. As an aside here, these OP clinophylla x bracteata seeds come from a plant that Viru has selected as the most tolerant of humid conditions... the parent plant is growing next to a pond and experiences periodic flooding... Now that we know we can get seed from other countries here without too much trouble maybe we can obtain more advanced seed material as well from all over the world, as I have now successfully brought seeds in form India and the U.S.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Oh, and the clinophylla x bracteata seedlings of which there were about 20, were all donated to the Ventura Cty. Rose Society Auction one year.

One of the volunteers had custody of them. That's the last I saw or heard anything about them. They seem to have vanished.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

If there are dwarfs in any of these, I am going to use those preferentially, with the hope that the dwarfing may pass onto a percentage of any F1 that result.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Simon, yes, I know. We all got the same seed.

You will note there are quite a few descendants. I decided to work with Viru's more advanced derivatives.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Paul Barden has done the cross [(0-47-19 x self) x R. Clinophylla]

See HMF links below for some of the resulting seedlings.

http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.51014

http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.61316

I wonder, is R. Clinophylla a difficult seed parent, and better used as a pollen parent, as Paul has done here?

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

My attempts to use clinophylla as seed parent were not successful. I'd bet it's possible, but I decided not to pursue it any longer.

I have one of Paul's hybrids here. I have my fingers crossed that it will flower for me. Last year I got one blossom. I used it on 'Riverbanks' which is normally quite fertile with pollen of any ploidy. One hip aborted and the other was small with a couple of small seed. I have them sown but no luck as yet.

It would be nice to get a remontant diploid clino. line etablished.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Sure would Robert. Lets hope you are successful this time round.. *crosses fingers*

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Also Robert, these sorts of precious crosses, where there is little achene to speak of, are great candidates for embryo culture. It can save years...The other thing embryo work can do, is confirm a possibility that there are no embryos in the achenes (ie. infertile achene despite normal appearance)..... it is good to know this sort of thing early in the piece, to know what you're actually dealing with.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

"It would be nice to get a remontant diploid clino. line established."

Done here my rugosa, bracteata, foliolosa plus lower recurrent hybrids x Viru Clinobrac op pollen 2007 crosses: all nice more or less compact recurrent small leaved and flowered, varied fertility and some with the foliolosa x bracteata difficulty to open flowers.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Congrats Pierre. I'll bet these are fascinating.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Pierre,

What have your experiences been on using your clones of Viru (clinophylla/bracteata) x op, or Viru (clinophylla) x op as a seed parent?

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

The plant that Pierre referred to is one of the best of the Hybrid Clinophyllas I have grown. It has been a fairly good repeater for me now that it is three years old, it sets seed easily (although this is the first year I am attempting to germinate these, so all bets are off as to viability of these seeds) and appears to be much more freeze tolerant than the species parent. (Recent freeze events did considerable damage to my two plants of R. clinophylla, but this seedling is alive right to the cane tips)

I have propagated this plant and have one or two pieces I am willing to send out to anyone who wants to use it in breeding. Bear in mind that I am limited to sharing these with folks here in the US, in observance with international agriculture regulations.

Link: http://www.helpmefind.com/rose/l.php?l=2.51014&tab=1

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(R.Clinophylla x R.Bracteata) x OP 3 days jar culture

Ok, time to plant this one, now.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(R.Clinophylla x OP), 2 days jar culture... The progress of this , the best embryo of the (R.Clinophylla x OP) batch is still not what I would call rapid, however it is developing...many of the remaining 13 embryos in this jar have done NO visible growing at all, most still appear marginally viable..

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

If you are interested in this stuff, have a look up at the picture I posted on Tue, Sep 22, 2009 (near the top of this thread). At a similar stage of embryo development for 6 days then you see the same sort of development at 3 days now.

I suppose a lot of this accelerated growth that is happening now, is due to the fact it is mid-summer as opposed to early spring.

This is also evidence, that rose embryos can be germinated all round the year, in my climate.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

"What have your experiences been on using your clones of Viru (clinophylla/bracteata) x op..."

I grow seedlings raised from seeds Viru sent me as (clinophylla x bracteata) x op. All plants being rather uniform and quite different from bracteata: much smaller leaves, thinner stems, non hooked spines, flower and hip comparable to bracteata ones. Repeats like bracteata.Quite fertile.
A tough plant little bothered by desease. Here autumn growth do not stop before all younger parts and leaves are frosted.

As I never grew clinophylla, comparison is impossible.

Beside using its pollen, I raised a few little OP progenies from isolated plants. Obviously most seeds were selfed.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Thanks Pierre, for the information.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

The clinophylla embryos continue to be problematic, unlike their clinophylla x bracteata cousins, where 3 out of the 6 are now planted as seedlings.

Here is the same clinophylla embryo I have been tracking all along, now at 3 days of jar culture. If it decides to grow a root, it should germinate ok. There were initially 14 clinophylla embryos in this jar, I have discarded 6 of those, as they were disintegrating, even though they had been extracted without damage. I am not surpirsed, as a lot of these never looked 100% alive right from the start.

clinophylla x op, day 3 jar culture:

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

George,
I was given R. clinophylla seeds about 8 years ago and I planted them in soil 1/4" deep just like all the rest of my seed. They germinated with no special care and I got 14 plants out of 20 seeds. I expect there may be instances in which embryo rescue may inhibit normal germination, so best to use it only when normal techniques have proven ineffective.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Paul,

I had nothing better to do that day..LOL...So I just did the extractions wanting super fast results..

I plan on just germinating achenes the normal way, come this winter.

Probably a more time efficient way of utilising embryo work, could be to utilise it after achenes have been given sufficient time to germinate the normal way, (and only of course if they are "super precious").

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Of course, there is no logic to doing embryo work on easy to germinate seed, except if you just want to do it for fun, or practice or curiosity.

Also I soon plan to post here, the % germinations when I am sure of the outcomes.

This current situation offers a chance to do a small scale parallel comparison study with the same batch of achenes planted immediately without extractions (even though I guess the numbers planted are going to be a whole lot more than the numbers that were cultured).

I am just interested in this idea for reasons of putting this whole embryo thing to a real test..it could turn out to be the crap option in the case of clinophylla x op... LOL!!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

George,
It would be worthwhile to do a test like this using a control group of the same seeds, planted in the standard way to see which did better, which germinated faster and what percentage of each group resulted in a seedling.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Paul, too bad there aren't another 20 achenes of this 'clinophylla' batch to do a comparative planting as a control, here in my climate.

I know I said......"embryo culture could turn out to be the crap option in the case of clinophylla x op... LOL!!"....

However, to be honest, here is my real take on this whole thing:

With embryo culture, I have noticed too any times now, that embryos that look dull and transluscent pre-culture are hard to convert to pearly white "active" types, and pretty much always fail the culture. In this 'clinophylla' batch, I was able to predict the ones that were going to live right from the start, and these are the few that are still trying to grow, now.

If you put a whole lot of bad embryos you know are very questionable in the culture along with those you know are definitley viable, as I did with 'clinophylla' (the seed was too precious to just throw out ANYTHING, LOL), the results are skewed to the bad end of the spectrum, and the "failure" is fairly predictable before the culture starts. In reality it is just non-viable embryos being included in the total count, which is ok. The only problem with doing this is that those bad embryos may carry fungus and infect the whole colony, so that is why I normally dont even culture the questionable types.

Here is another example of the predictability of the culture in advance.....I knew, for example before the 'clinophylla x bracteata' culture started, that the embryos were all excellent looking right from the start, and indeed that culture is probably going to be 100% successful....in under one week I now have 5/6 of them potted up, and growing in their pots as green leaved seedlings...now that is FAST...LOL

Anyway, now in case these questionable 'clinophylla' embryos are carrying covert fungus on them (no visible evidence of fungus yet), I decided to isolate them in a second jar, last night, and cleaned out the original jar where I have resetteld the more viable ones.

Here is the best 'clinophylla' embryo, as it appears this morning, day 4 of its jar culture:

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

You know, I really should have planted 10 achenes and cultured 10 achenes of the clinophylla..what a shame I didn't think to do this as a nice little comparative study, it would have been fun to watch.

Embryo culture for rose achene is fantastic, but is only ever required RARELY, (thank goodness!)

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Here is the last of the colony of 6 (clinophylla x bracteata) x op, at day 5 of its jar culture, and miles behind its sibblings in growth (the others are all officially green-leaved seedlings in potting mix now, as I mentioned earlier on today).

Who knows, maybe this one was created by a bee that pollinated it with pollen from some remontaant modern rose (wishful thinking), or from some other exotic rose species, in Viru's garden.....speculation is rife here, I know LOL. It is all in the name of fun, anyway.

In any case, this does illustrate, yet again, how the rate of growth can range from super fast to super slow from members of the same species and even from sibblings of the same hip...I suppose this is very natural, and should be expected to be part of what we normally encounter.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Post pictures of the leafed-up seedlings!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(clinophylla x bracteata) x op.

1st germination potted on day 3 of jar culture, as seen today after 2 days growing in the pot.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(clinophylla x bracteata) x op.

2nd germination potted on day 4 of jar culture, as seen today after 1 day of growing in the pot.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(clinophylla x bracteata) x op.

3rd germination potted on day 4 of jar culture, as seen today after 1 day of growing in the pot.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(clinophylla x bracteata) x op.

4th germination potted today, day 5 of jar culture

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

(clinophylla x bracteata) x op.

5th germination potted today, day 5 of jar culture

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

This posting is an answer to a private email query I received recently from an RHA forum contributor, who was having some sort of "drying" troubles with his embryo work. I am not sure what sort of embryo culture he was utilising, and I am not sure at what stage the embryos were drying out, however I thought I would post my response here, to also benefit other readers here who may be interested in jar embryo culture.

Here goes....

I routinely immerse all my embryos these days as soon as they are extracted into a clean glass of cool tap water for at least 24hrs (I make sure they have sunk to the bottom). Then I submit them to the jar culture. Maybe I should be keeping them in water even longer, until they actually start to open their cotyledons, or show other definite signs of growth (I have done this and have been quite successful with the embryos in water for 2 or even 3 days).

With this jar embryo culture method, you need to keep an eye out especially for re-emerging dehydration, once the embryos are in the jar. It is not necessarily that the jar is not maintaining humidity, it has often more to do with the quality of the embryos you have in front of you, and their ability to maintain adequate water balance without help from you.

Some embryos just don't maintain a good water balance in their first few days in culture. These need water resuscitation, and this can take several rounds until they start to independently maintain their own water balance.

If any of the embryos seem to have no "halo" of water around them on the side of the fogged glass, you resuscitate them by simply taking them out of the jar, and immerse them into a clean glass of cool water probably overnight, then place them again on the side of the fogged jar and look for a halo of water to develop around them (have a look at some of the pictures above to see what I mean about this "halo" of water). If this does not happen, sink them in tap water for longer, yes longer. A dead embryo will eventually just disintegrate, get rid of it, it was never any good and will only become a nidus for fungi to feast upon.

Keep the interior of the jar fogged up at all times, and re-fog the jar any time you think it is losing the fogging by exhaling into it a few times..To be honest I might have to do this once every day, sometimes more sometimes less frequently, it is not a big deal. Of course keep the lid sealed well, and ensure there is a water line on the bottom of the jar. Keep about 1/2' gap between the water line and the lowest embryo.

The water halo sign is a subtle yet fairly reliable sign of good embryo hydration and health.

Oh, and by the way, the reason I am emphasising "cool water", is because tap water can be hot..LOL (eg. on a hot day, or the hot water was running just before you got to the tap again...Please test the tap water by letting it run on your hands for a while until you are sure it runs consistently cool, before using it on the embryos. You don't want to boil them!!

Hope this helps answer your email question, best of luck!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

George,
You really ought to collate all this great information into a followup article on embryo culture for the RHA Newsletter. This could be presented as one person's practical application of Don's technique presented last year. I think many people will find this very meaningful.

Paul

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Paul's comments here have prompted me to now explain a little about the origins of the jar culture/box cutter ideas I have posted all over this thread.

It was sheer coincidence that Don was just about to release his RHA document relating to his very involved embryo work, not long after I started chatting about the jar culture/box cutter thing on this thread. I had only just become familiar enough with this RHA forum, and was just starting to even get a grip on who was who, (if you know what I mean?!)

I had stumbled upon this RHA forum by chance only 3 or so months prior, and I had no idea an RHA member (Don) had been so involved in all this embryo work to the point of an imminent publication.. Such things happen in life, its ok.

So I started to reveal my method here, and then Don asked me questions about my method, and then kindly sent me a copy of his work which was about to be published.

It immediately fascinated me to see the different angles of attack...very cool and quite a funny coincidence.

What I have done here is just out of my own mind, it is NOT based on any scientific readings/research papers....and it seemed to work. The whole jar/box-cutter embryo idea came to my mind some time ago now, when I had not even thought to dabble in roses but was dabbling with olive pits. I wanted to get olive pits to germinate in less than the 1-2 years they normally require, as I wanted a few olive seedling rootstocks to use to bud varieties of olive that are extremely unreliable to root as cuttings. My intuition told me to start cutting the pit with the box cutter knife.. BAD IDEA...Slowly over the seasons, I realised that with olive pits I could do away with the box-cutter (at least for the step of removing the seed from within the pit) and instead apply a small series of light hammer taps to the suture line, and this usually results in fast successful release of the olive seed out of the hard pit.

NOW... a long time later, I seem to have have developed a fixation in rose breeding, so I just modified the olive pit idea to the rose achene (without the hammer step LOL).

Look I am the sort that just likes to muck around experimenting trying to find practical solutions to stuff that bugs me. A lot of us do this without even thinking..it IS FUN!

Speaking of fun, here is a picture comparing a 6 day old rose embryo (left ) to a 4 week old olive embryo (right), both still in need of more jar culture.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

I would also like to say here, that this jar culture thing remains a "work in progress".

I am currently doing a few studies to see if I can get the same sort of percentage germinations from good embryos cultured in a jar versus good embryos simply planted in a germination medium (like commercial seed raising mix you buy at the shop). I think the main "trick" here will be to tweek the water balance thing (too much water and they rot, too little water and they dehydrate and die).

It is quite easy to get SOME embryos to germinate if you plant them directly seed raising mix, that I already know. I just want to see how I can get equal results to the jar..That would be soooo much easier, agree?

Anyway, I will keep those of you that are interested in this stuff updated like I just have, on this thread.

My ultimate aim here is to have fun sharing with people like you who love roses, anything that might lighten up your day, even if it amounts to you just having a quiet giggle with yourself, after reading stuff like this!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Hi.

I want to show you some more pictures captured by my trusty little webcam, which by the way is an invaluable tool in my embryo culture work.

Why invaluable? well...you can unclip the cam from the frame of your computer screen and it becomes a mobile high quality video magnifier.... It provides immediate live magnification of things you could never hope to see with your eye, in their very early manifestations...the earlier you detect a deterioration, the more chance you stand of being successful in your corrective action. I might do this once in the morning and once at night, to monitor subtle changes in progress.


Now back to the pictures I wanna show here.

This (clinophylla xop) embryo is currently in water resuscitation..it looks poor qaulity, it is 6 days in jar culture....a few days ago it was removed from its original colony and isolated in what I call the "quarantine jar" . Here it is receiving water resuscitation. Basically the quarantine jar is exactly the same jar as for embryo culture, only instead of the embryos clinging to the side of the fogged jar, away from the water line beneath them, in the case of the quarantine jar the embryos are simply sunk to the bottom of the water line, until they either open cotyledons and plump up, or die, whence they are discarded, one by one.

Jar embryo culture does have some versatility, to be sure.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Here is a second poor quality embryo (clinophylla x op) undergoing water resuscition in the quarantine jar (day 6 jar culture)..I can see a slight blemish on the cotyledon, this is worrying, it is probably a sign of death, but it might be artefact/shadowing..I'll soon know, but I must give it every chance, as this exotic species has come all the way from India!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Here is a third embryo (clinophylla x op, day 6 jar culture) in the quarantine jar undergoing water resuscitation.

In this case with the marvelous help of the webcam magnification, I can see subtle signs of cotyledon opening, so this one is in a better condition than its other two fellows pictured immediately above this entry.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

This embryo (clinophylla x op, 6 days jar culture) was in water resuscitation for 2 days. It initially looked like the first two poor quality embryos of this series of four pictures, but it opened its cotyledons, and got shinier and bulkier (put on wieght) and maintains a good water halo in the fogged jar..It now stands a good chance of germinating *crosses fingers*

So, never give up on them, especially if their provenance happens to be, well, "precious" (in this case India>Viru>Simon...LOL).

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

A NOTE TO THOSE READING THIS WHO ARE PERHAPS NEW TO THIS THREAD OR WHO MAY BE BEGINNERS IN ROSE BREEDING.

One RHA forum reader emailed me privately yesterday, and decided that all this embryo stuff was not for him this season....of course he was absolutely correct about that!

It is only meant to be used in rare cases where seed has some important breeding potential and ALSO known to be impossible to germinate in the usual fashion for rose seed (ie. by sowing after some sort of stratification, in most cases).

In my case here, I am demonstrating refinements of a specialised system, so I use whatever seed I have. This has nothing to do with normal germinating practice for rose seed.

I am sounding like a broken record about this, however the email I got recently compelled me to write this, just to help clear up any confusion some fresh beginners may have about the role of jar embryo culture.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

TROUBLE WITH CLINOPHYLLA X OP in embryo jar culture...

I was right, there IS fungus in one of the clinophylla x op embryos!

In fact 12 hours ago the webcam revealed a few tiny fungal filaments, but I decided to wait and see if this was fungus or just some webcam glare artefact.. there is no doubt now... To put the picture below into some scale, I can barely just see these filaments with my own eyes.

Now, I had been suspicious about fungus right from the time these showed abnormally slow growth (see discussions above), so at least I have been proactively chasing this covert little trouble maker..(I am trying to make myself feel better about this..LOL).

I must deal with this, FAST.

I already know that directly planting good quality fresh embryos which have been pre-immersed in water for 24-48hrs has yielded germinations in the past for me (germination rate 10%-100%).

My instinct now tells me to immediately plant each of these embryos in its own individual pot, into commercial seed raising mix, and keep the whole thing on the dry side of damp..(maybe pre-wet the medium, then place the rinsed embryos on top, and then throw a little dried medium over the embryos to cover them, and simply mist-spray the surface, as required, to keep the surface just moist.

BTW, expected temperature maxima for where I live are 90F for today, and 102F for tomorrow (relative humidity hovering between 50% - 80%).

I don't think that the weather is quite on my side, either!

Stay tuned..LOL

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Molds tend to be opportunistic rather than pathogenic - they grow on dead or dying tissue. Sometimes part of a cotyledon can be dead while other parts are alive and green-up. That's what your photo seems to show.

Reducing the temperature can help. 55-65 degrees F. is a good range to germinate rose embryos. In that range the bugs grow more slowly while the embryos grow pretty quickly.

Hydrogen peroxide helps too.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Hi Don.

In the time between ending my post here, and receiving your post, I hgad already planted the five embryos from that jar in fresh seed rasing mix. I first rinsed them in water and then lightly misted them with a hand sprayer to clean them up again.

Thanks for your posting here, it is interesting...the fungus looked gross anyway, I just couldn't stand the sight of it to be honest.....LOL.

I should have photographed the other four of this colony in the jar prior to planting, but well I was in a hurry this time!

Three of them had greening-up cotyledons, and some rootlet formation, but not quite enough to declare them "germinated"... all five actually do look in good condition otherwise, even the one with this fungal colonisation looked quite robust and "bouncy" when lightly sprayed down with my little hand spray-mister.

There are three others wich are the worst performers, those are isolated in another jar system altogether...one of them seems to be springing open its cotyledons, but the other two remain inactive, yet have developed opaqueness, from initial transluscency...there is hope there, also.

I'll put the pots in an insulated cooler box thing known in this country as an "esky", to try and keep it cool in this sizzling heat. I'm doing this indoors of course.

:0)

Soon enough I'll provide a simple summary here of the achene numbers, the extraction success rate, my predictions of culture results (which I made at the time of extraction, based upon the embryo quality/appearance), and the actual culture results.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

I have assigned these embryos code names.

The fungus affected one is 02-10-05. It will be most interesting to study it as a germinated seedling if it gets to that point, to see if there is any correlation between the embryo pathology, and the resulting seedling appearance.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

BTW I do all these embryo transfers in and out of jars and such, by swirling the water in the jar to pick up all the embryos. Once in the water, you can just empty the water and the embryos out onto a flat saucer from the kitchen. If they don't all come out, just add cool water to the side of the jar, and repeat. I have never damaged an embryo this way, ever.

Then I use the flat end of a knife with a rounded end (eg. butter knife) to gently coax each embryo onto it, for transter to the germinating medium.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

PRELIMINARY SUMMARY OF TWO PARALLEL JAR EMBRYO CULTURES:




****ACHENE CROSS '01-10': (Clinophylla x Bracteata)xop****

12 dried achenes were received and processed Jan 12, 2010:

All 12 embryos were extracted undamaged (using a box-cutter knife)...1 was gelatinised and discarded, 5 were totally dried beyond recognition and discarded.

6 remaining embryos were immersed in water...(all showed excellent pearly sheen, and developed bulking-up and/or opening cotyledons, after 24hrs of water immersion).

PREDICTED JAR CULTURE RESULT: 6 germinations were predicted at the time this jar culture was started, based on this data.





****ACHENE CROSS '02-10': Clinophylla x op****

20 dried achenes were received and processed Jan 12, 2010:

6 embryos were damaged from the extraction procedure (box cutter knife), and discarded. All 20 achenes were very dense, very difficult to open up, and the embryos were comparatively tiny, spindly and very fragile to handle.

14 remaining embryos were immersed in water (2 developed only moderate sheen, 12 remained dull or even partially transluscent after 48hrs water immersion).


PREDICTED JAR CULTURE RESULT: 2 germinations were predicted at the time this jar culture was started, based on this data.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

My next entry will give the actual jar culture results (may take up to one week from now).

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

FINAL JAR CULTURE RESULTS (REFER TO DISCUSSIONS IMMEDIATELY ABOVE FOR RELEVANT DETAILS)

My main OBJECTIVE in doing these 2 particular cultures was to get very fast germinations happening to gain growing time as we are already in the middle of our growing season. This gives a greater chance to start moving the generation along this season, if any of them decide to flower before winter sets in!


CLINOPHYLLA x OP...3 successful germinations (initial prediction was for 2 germinations). The members of this colony were prematurely taken out of the jar and buried in seed raising mix due to fungus growing on one from this colony....this one disintegrated. Three from this colony sprouted simultaneously on day 10.


(CLINOPHYLLA X BRACTEATA) x OP... 5 successful germinations (initial prediction was for 6 germinations). All germinations were achieved by day 5 of jar culture.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Here are some personal thoughts of mine, that spring from these latest jar embryo cultures:

1. Seed that is massively dessicated (to the point of marginal viability) is also infinitely difficult to extract, as it has no "give" and easily fractures compared to viable yet dessicated seed. In other words, there appears to be a point beyond which seed dessication becomes a hinderance rather than a help, in achene extractions.

2. It appears that there should be more study done on when is the best time to plant the embryos from the jar and out into the germination medium (commercial seed raising mix in my case).

It is becoming apparent in my work with this jar method, that the optimal timing of embryo planting into seed raising mix could be when they partially green their cotyledons (and not anything to do with root development at all).. too many of these embryos with partially greening cotyledons (and hardly any root development in some cases) are germinating within days of being buried in the germination medium. This is too important to ignore.

In fact a fair few embryos just green their cotyledons in jar culture, but root developemt is almost nothing to speak of..yet once buried in seed raising mix they sometimes germinate in days.

I wonder if root development for SOME embryos is at times HINDERED by something in embryo culture, and I just wonder if that "thing" is light itself.

I speculate that for these reasons, once the embryo has greened its cotyledons, it should be buried in germination medium where the relative darkness does something to promote the bottom end..LOL!

Just speculation, but...

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Just for fun, this embryo in jar culture (flower carpet-white xop) is 4 days old.

"So what" you say..well...the webcam picked up something I would never have stood a chance of detecting with my eyes this morning....have a look at the top right cotyledon, can you see the partial fracture it has sustained? It is like looking at an X-Ray of a broken limb ROFLOL.

BTW to get three embryos from about ten flower carpet (white) plants, I must have looked through twenty or more hips. Most were empty hips, some had achenes, half of which had no embryo inside them, just a dried up testa.

I wonder if any of these op embryos will produce a seed fertile version of flower carpet-white....(yeah, and pigs fly!)
:0)

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Update on Clinophylla x op seedlings..One of the three has decided to die (damping off)..the other two look very frail and are a worry! What is it with this Clinophylla?? Are we talking the same language about Clinophylla here.. I thought it liked to live in a swamp LOL.

On the other hand the (clinophylla x bracteata) xop continue to grow just fine.

Go figure!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Just for fun, here is a tetracotyledon flower-carpet x OP embryo. As I mentioned in some other thread, the 'Flower Carpet-white' x OP embryos are showing me a high frequency of embryo abnormalities (for the relative few embryos that it produces).

This one is just starting to green up when I look at it with my eyes (this greening is not so obvious in this iamge).

I am now going to plant it into commercial seed raising mix, hoping that like most others at this very early stage of embryo development (ie. just starting to green up without root growth), the darkness of the germination medium will promt it to grow roots and sprout in a few days time. The less time it needs to spend in the jar, the better!

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Here is another 'Flower Carpet'-white' embryo with partial greening but without roots, which I will also plant now. It can be a sort of 'control' for me, because the tetracotyledon may be less likely to succeed to germination due to higher likelihood of some inherent "disorder".

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

"Update on Clinophylla x op seedlings..One of the three has decided to die (damping off)..the other two look very frail and are a worry! What is it with this Clinophylla?? Are we talking the same language about Clinophylla here.. I thought it liked to live in a swamp LOL. "

My clinophylla seeds have just started to germinate naturally... got 8 up so far and counting and they are very strong seedlings with rich dark cotyledons and red/green true leaves. More are coming up all the time. In this case I think there was little advantage to culturing these seeds and the naturally germinated ones will overtake the cultured ones very quickly.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Simon.

I am about to post pictures below of the two embryo cultured Clinophylla seedlings, which at the time of their germination looked pathetic in the 100F+ heat and super humidity..... The temperatures have dropped considerably from the over 100F mark when they germinated. We have gorgeous mild autumn days now. I dislike heat and humidity, so I am very much in my element now, and I am looking forward to the rest of autumn winter and spring (these are my favourite seasons here where I live).

Simon, these are your back up seedlings if ever you need them. I hope you are pleased I have nursed them all along like they were the most precious thing, mainly for you, and yes maybe I will use them also, time and space permitting.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Clinophylla 02-10-01VAR

Germinated on Jan 25 2010 after being completely buried in commercial seed raising mix, as a partially greened embryo with incomplete root formation, @ 10 days into its jar culture.

Here is how it looks todsay (at 5 weeks and 2 days of growth):

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Clinophylla 02-10-02VAR

This sister seedling also germinated on Jan 25 2010 after being completely buried in commercial seed raising mix, as a partially greened embryo with hardly any root formation, @ 10 days into its jar culture.

Here is how it looks today (at 5 weeks and 2 days of growth):

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

One other thing....

If a study WERE to be performed comparing easy to germinate seed like Clinophylla with embryo culture of the same, one should consider collecting fresh seed and sowing it immediately, and do the embryo culture simultaneously.

This eliminates possible time bias- I wonder whether freshly collected Clinophylla seed would germinate as fast as Clinophylla seed sown which has spent time drying out and travelling all around the place (ie. a "warm stratification" of sorts)... There are also climactic, cultural and probably a few other biases that would need addressing, before a true comparison can be achieved...dunno...*shrugs*

Anyway, in the final analysis, embryo culture for me has an imporatant but limited application, such as for obtaining super-fast germinations, or for germinating recalcitrant seed...It is just another skill that is handy to have when you need it most, like grafting or budding....just my opinion, of course.
:-)

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

I also have a question for anybody that can help me here, please?

I have two forms of soluble fertiliser here with these alternative analyses:

*N-P-K 15 - 4 - 26
*N-P-K 27 - 5.5 - 9

Which of these is better for rose seedlings?

When do I start to apply this, to these Clinophylla and (Clinophylla x Bracteata) seedlings?

How often should I apply this?

OR is it better if I purchase slow release fertiliser from the start and skip the liquid feeds altogether?

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

On the question of dried seeds vs fresh. George is undoubtedly right, there is a difference. David Zlesak published a paper showing even a short while dry affects germ %. Many earlier studies on germ responses used commercial seed that had been dried for shipping. I'd say all of these need big ?? around their results. I'm in process of testing for one CV (Country Dancer) both short and longer drying, freezing in the hips, holding in frig of the hips, etc. It will take a year to have the results. I've not even taken the last lot of seed from hips to stratification yet and they'll need 10-12 months to see the final tally. Some of the early treatments do have germ already at a constant 4-5 C.

On the other hand for R. soulieana the best results were obtained with 68 weeks dry before planting, and for some canina types the germ % rose very year for 5 yr.

I will get that review finished and "published" soon.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

George:
the 27-5.5-9 sounds more like a fertilizer for grass and you will likely burn the roses. IMO slow release is a better alternative.

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

Larry, I would love to see the results of your work!
Jeff, thanks for your advice! :0)

Effect of drying seeds

>> I'm in process of testing for one CV (Country Dancer) both short and longer drying, freezing in the hips, holding in frig of the hips, etc.

I'll be interested in seeing your results, Larry.

I can't speak to the effect of drying on germination by the usual method of refrigeration and stratification. However, drying does not appear to have a detrimental effect on the viability of rose seeds that are germinated using embryo culture. In fact, refrigerating seeds that have been thoroughly dried seems to be a very effective way to store them. For me, this has been true for seeds from a wide variety of roses, not just species.

In my experience freezing of seeds seems to be a risky thing to do, especially without first shelling them out and drying them completely using a desiccant such as silica gel.

Re: Effect of drying seeds

Don and Larry.

Pierre's Rutten's very interesting observations in his "septic way sowing" thread (posted late 2009) are what got me to speculate here that dried Clinophylla achene may germinate significantly faster than the fresh equivalent. It is just speculation on my part.

I love the simplicity of Pierre's method, and I am giving it a try this season (I am still not sure if I will also do the 6 week fridge stratification, or not).

Re: Effect of drying seeds

For all the readers here who are interested in the jar method of embryo culture of rose seed, I would now also like to post the results of a little comparison study I did a few weeks back (please refer to discussion above dated Fri, Feb 12, 2010).

To recap, I chose a four-cotyledon embryo and its sister seedling which had the usual two cotyledons to act as a control (both derivatives of 'Flower Carpet-white'). I wanted to show what for some time I have repeatedly come across, namely that germinations are happening with a high % of success, when they have been cultured in a jar only up until they start to green a little, and well before they grow a rootlet (this is a considerably shorter duration of jar culturing than I used to do last year, when I first experimented with rose seed embryos as opposed to other plant embryos).

Both of these germinated after a few days of burying, as can be seen in the pictures below.

I have definitley changed my position on when I personally will be happy to remove embryos from jar culture and plant them directly by burying them completely (but near the surface) in commercial seed raising mix.

This sort of germination success has happened using modern cultivars, as well as a variety of rose species like Multiflora, Bracteata, Clinophylla, and others.

These conclusions relate to the jar culture method of rose embryo culture, and are not intended to contradict or challenge the wonderful work of others here, who use different methods of culture, and for whom I have absolute respect, by the way. It is all in the name of observing things, that's all!
:-)

Re: Effect of drying seeds

Germination at day 4 after burying rootless 4-cotyledon rose embryo with greening cotyledons

Re: Effect of drying seeds

Germination at day 4 after burying rootless 2-cotyledon rose embryo with greening cotyledons

Re: Effect of drying seeds

Here, the 4-cotyledon embryo at day 7 of germination.

(Note the mould-resistant snail baits...thank goodness for that invention..lol..the mouldy ones nearly made me vomit).

Re: Effect of drying seeds

And finally, the 2-cotyledon embryo shown here, also at seven days following its germination.

Re: Effect of drying seeds

Here you can see one of my multiflora seedlings, just emerging, this morning. This one was cultured in the jar for something like 4 days, and it greend partially but had not developed a rootlet. It has germinated after only 2 days!

I have noticed that some diploid species embryos are much faster at germinating than things like flower carpet, the slowest of which can take up to one week to germinate after being buried in the same manner, and at the same immature stage of development (ie. partially green/no rootlet).

One incidental advantage to burying them at this early stage of development, is that by definition they dont get any root damage in the transfer from jar to planting medium (which would spell death), as there is no root!

Another huge advantage to there being no rootlet, is that the embryo can basically be plonked into the little hole any wich way it goes in. It will orientate its roots down and germinate with no troubles, sometimes it even has the typical hair-pin bend appearance.

Here is how I transfer them from jar to seed raising mix:

I just pre-wet (flood) the pot containting the seed raising mix until it has settled and formed a nice flat surface after the water has drained. I then swirl the jar containing the embryo(s) on the side of the jar until the water on the bottom of the jar scoops them all up. Then I tip the water plus embryos onto the surface of the seed raising mix. Using a small wooden skewer, or flat knife (or whatever similar is available), I make a tiny hole in the wet seed mix, scrape the embryo into the hole, and then gently water over a little mix to bury it, using droplets of water to make sure the embryo does not sink any lower than a few millimetres.

Because the mix has been pre-wetted, and the mix holds moisture well, I never water the surface, save for a few squirts with my hand held mister in case the weather has been so hot as to dry the surface out (rare, as the embryos germinate many days before this usually happens!).
I keep the pots in a shaded position and sheltered out of the rain and elements.

JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

I think I have pretty much finished all I wanted to achieve with embryo jar culture, but who knows?

Re: JAR EMBRYO CULTURE.....NUANCES AND NEW DISCOVERIES.

UPDATE... the 4-cotyledon 'Flower Carpet-white' seedling featured above died 24hrs ago, its sister control embryo is fine, as are all the other embryos of the "Flower Carpet-white'x OP that were germinated using the same modified short jar culturing I described further up here.

I am thinking that the 4-cotyledon feature has some negative correlation with seedling vigor. This idea has of course also been alluded to by others who are more experienced than me in rose breeding, here on this forum.

Effect of drying seeds

>>>>>>>>drying does not appear to have a detrimental effect on the viability of rose seeds that are germinated using embryo culture<<<<<<

I agree with this, Don. I also find that dry achene is easier to grab onto with less slippage, which is helpful to the seed extraction step. Also some of the dried achenes have very dried seed which has shrunk back, and there is an air gap between seed and achene wall, which makes it less likely to injure the seed during the seed extraction step of embryo culture (at least in my case using the knife).

If I were to choose fresh seed to dry seed to work with in embryo culture, I would choose dry seed any day for these reasons (as long as it is not dried to the point of brittleness/near death).

Re: Effect of drying seeds

In my experience, dry/viable embryos literally explode with activity as soon as they hit water. Dry/but near dead (or dry/dead) embryos can look undamaged but remain pallid and dull, and are ovbviously non(or minimally)-responsive to water challenge in the first few hours post extraction, and ultimately wither away sometimes showing obvious mold attack.

Just my observations.

Re: Effect of drying seeds

In October last year, I posted these comments on this thread:

>>>>>I have planted seed extracted with the box cutter and with no cutting of their seed coat, (as well also planted bare embryo) in seed-raising mix, with all the nasty bugs it contains..... and germinations occured. Usually the germinations take 10-14 days, sometimes it takes a little longer. Certainly by 4 weeks no more germinations can be expected<<<<<<<<<

Now I was not getting consistently good % germinations by doing this at that time, and I surmised that maybe the embryos NEEDED a period of jar culture to enhance their germinability. I am not so sure any more..

You know, since then a lot has happened. I recently planted about 30 embryos as bare embryos (pre-soaked for about 12-24 hours in water), and I deliberately skipped the jar culture altogether.

I nearly got 100% germination! I kind of ignored this at the time, as I percieved there was some "safety factor" in the jar culture step.

I am NOW thinking that the reason in the early days I was NOT getting this sort of success with skipping the jar culture altogether (in just burying bare embryos without culturing them) was that I was planting them too deeply and/or was watering them too frequently and forcefully, causing them to sink too deep and/or to rot. Maybe all I need to do is to tweek the planting and watering of the embryos in the first critical days before their germination.

Today, I have nine embryos I extracted from a single hip, and they were about to get jar cultured....

However, I am going to plant them in pre-soaked seed raising mix and roll them into a small hole in the wetted mix, then lightly cover them with a few millimetres of wetted mix, using droplets/light watering, making sure the embryos do not dive deeply into the mix. This mix holds water very well, so I will not water them thereafter (I will however mist the surface of the mix once every few days if it starts to dry out). I will keep them in shade, out of the rain and elements until germination.

This is exactly what I did with the 30 embryos a few weeks back, and got nearly all of them germinating.

Quiet honestly, if this does work again for me with good the % germiantion I noted recently, I will abandon my jar culture step altogether...lol

Will post results soon.

Re: Effect of drying seeds

Here they are at the moment.

They have just finished a 12 hour water soaking.

Now gonna plant 'em!

Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Most of us like to keep things as simple as possible.

Today I planted another nine rose seeds, this time I kept the testae ON these embryos deliberately, to see how they will germinate, compared to the nine bare embryos I have planted. Everything has been done identically, and the seed is from the same hip as the nine bare embryos.

Seven of the nine seeds had small slits on their testa covering that were not done deliberately, but were a result of the box cutter cutting into the achenes and coming too close to the testa. I see this as a bonus in using the box-cutter knife. The small slits were mostly clear of the radicle end of the seed, but some were close to the radicle end....(these small slits should enhance the germinability). Two of the seeds actually showed NO visible tearing at all.

Results will be posted over the next few weeks.

Here are the nine seeds after an overnight water soaking, just before they were planted this morning:

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

First rose seedling of nine germinated yesterday (on day 8) after being buried as a bare embryo in seed raising mix

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Second rose seedling germinated 24 hours ago (day 8) after being buried as a bare embryo in seed raising mix

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

George, thank you, that you keep us informed about your progress and your variations with this method. Also many thanks to Don, for providing the article.
I started also with the embryo culture, modified you jar cultur, using petri dishes.
The 1st one is still potted :-)

cheers Bernhard

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

They look in excellent condition to me, Bernhard. Congratulations, and keep posting on it.

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Instead of the 4-5 inch deep pots I have been using for the rose embryo/rose seed germinations, (where I suspect some seed had dived too deep and subsequently rotted in the past), I am now searching to find shallow "plug trays" similar to the ones Paul Barden mentioned on his blog, recently. I hope they are available in this country! (see link below to Paul's blog showing his picture of this system in action).

Link: http://paulbarden.blogspot.com/2010/03/100-09-stage-two.html

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Today is day 9 post sowing of the 9 rose seeds with intact testa coverings. The first of these 9 seeds has just sprouted, here it is:

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Pictured here is the seed coat (testa) that I found underneath the seedling pictured above.

The embryo clearly exited from the end opposite the radicle end, which is highly suggesive that the micro-slit from the box-cutter offered the path of least resistance to this seedling/embryo.

In the picture below, dirt marks the point of exit of this seedling.

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

As far as the nine bare ebmryos in the pot goes, I got three nice germinations...and then nothing for several days. I just lifted the dirt up to see what is going on with the other embryos...and found three green but sad looking embryos with transluscent rootlets (a bad sign) and was unable to find the other three.... So say this pot gave probably 3/9 germination rate at worst, for this varietal.

To my horror, yesterday I also noticed that the sun had been hitting the pots directly for several hours in the middle of the day, through gaps around the shade cloth, and some caking/crusting has occured in the germination media. My guess is that these embryos were accidentally baked.

At this point I am thinking that:

1. I must choose a better position where the pots can be guaranteed no direct sun.

2. I might have to develop my own formula for a better seed-raising mix which does not cake-over/crust.

I am thinking some sort of peat moss/sand mix I can do myself would be better. Can anyone here help out with suggestions for what makes a good airy rose seed-raising mix?

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

This morning I did another two sowings of mature rose embryo and seed.

This time I used two very shallow (approx. 1.5 inch deep) plastic rectangular pots. I used the same commercial seed raising mix (this is all I have at the moment to use!), but I did not pre-flood it with water this time. I just used it as it was (moist) out of the bag, nice and fluffy, not compressed down by heavy watering.

In one pot I placed two 'Flower Carpet x OP' bare embryos. In the second I placed 17 rose seeds (ie. achene removed but testa covering intact). These 17 rose seeds were from a floribunda-type rose bush. I had pre-soaked these embryos/seeds overnight as usual, to get them nice and plump.

After burying these very superficially, I then hand mist-sprayed the surface till it was wet, but this time I made very sure no compression of the germination medium occurred, by this final "watering-in" step.

Then I placed both pots into a 10 litre plastic bucket, with a small amount of water at the bottom of the bucket, to allow constant watering from below.

I brought this bucket indoors.

I am going to do nothing else to these, and see what happens. Maybe I'll get more consistent and better results....or maybe they will rot. We shall see.

If I don't try these variations, I'll never be able to work out what I am doing wrong. The fact that some bare embryos have germinated at close to 100% in some pots, and others at 10%-30%-50% in other pots at other times, makes me think that there are some factors in my sowing procedure causing this inconsistency.

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Here are the two 'Flower Carpet-white' embryos one week after the above treatment. One is greened but not going to throw a root. The other is ok.

These sort of results are similar to what I am getting in the jar culture.

I would much prefer to be experimenting on direct planting my (mature) embryos and rose seed (achene extracted) and skipping the jar culture.

Maybe if I keep doing this for a while I'll be better able to fine tune the whole method.

Anyway, it is a lot of fun for me to muck around with at the moment.

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

To be complete about this, I also found a tiny white caterpillar-like grub nibbling at the root zone of one of these two seedlings (it was buried in the root zone)! This factor could definitely be affecting results. I never imagined commercial "seed raising mix" could contain such critters, but there you go.

I am going to switch to a soil-less germination medium of some type.

I have no idea what makes a good soil-less germination mix for rose seed. Can anyone here please advise?

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

In this country a lot of people use something like Pro-Mix, or Metro-Mix. Originally developed at Cornell University, most are based on varying proportions of sphagnum bog peat, vermiculite and perlite with trace elements added. Recently ash of pine bark has been added as a cheap source of some minerals. The soilless mixes used for growing potted plants in the nursery trade may contain composted pine tree bark. It decomposes more slowly and so is favored for that use. I don't think it's the greatest for rose seeds but I have done OK with it. But after a couple weeks you have to add in some liquid fertilizer. Common ones here are Peter's soluble, or Miracle-Gro. Watch out for the ammonium and urea in modern formulations. When ammonium nitrate went out of fashion (by law)it was replaced with ammonia and urea which are much more prone to burn foliage.

The other day I was looking at a website for Hummert International (from a nearby town), where several different soilless mixes are described. You can also read about the Cornell mixes I believe by a google search.

If you check out growth media for Arabidopsis by google search you can find variants on the ones I mentioned above. It requires relatively low nutrient levels, in a porous, fine-grained medium (because its seeds are so small) and so is good for germinating things but will need supplementation once the seedlings are well established.

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

ok, thanks Larry for your very interesting advice!

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

George
I am in Australia.
My first attempt to grow seeds 2 years back I had 120 seeds in 100mm deep trays in my laundry and only 8 seeds appeared.
I had small caterpillars crawling about on the growing medium and I actually saw them crawl into a split in the seed case. I had a lot of seeds that year that split but no growth appeared.
I assumed they were fungas gnat larvae and my soil mix was too wet.but I did not think they came in the mix although it is a possability. They were very small(about 4mm x 1/2mm) and white. By the time I identified them the damage had been done.
The next year I used perlite as a topping and have not had them since. I don't know if I solved the problem or it was just luck.
Russ

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Hi Russell.

Too bad I didn't photograph the bug. It is rare in my experience to see such a latched-on bug under the soil line feeding on the root.

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Russell,

Further to your observations, and those of others on this forum, it is probably high time I switched over to perlite as the topping/covering over the seeds/embryos/achenes I sow from now on.

It might solve several of the problems I have had with the plain seed raising mix, including the "crusting-over" of the surface.

I might also incorporate some of it into the seed raising mix as well, depending on what it looks like...I must get a bag of the stuff very soon.

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

some of my 1st attempts are looking well, could save one of the only 2 embryos of 'Abraham Darby x Sympathy'.
Some others are threaten by fungi, esp. the cotyledons, particular the damaged areas, due to the poor handling by the breeder :-(
Some pictures of my petri dish culture you can find in the link below.

Link: http://rosebreeding.blogspot.com/search/label/Embryo%20Kultur

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Bernhard, congratulatons.

You are doing very well in such a short career at embryo work. Since you have got this far with it, it is just a matter of time and practice, and you will get better, to be sure.

Why are some of your embryos stained yellow (are you applying fungicide to them)?

It is strange but I have only ever encountered fungi once or twice, in hundreds of runs so far, for whatever reason. Maybe it is becasue I don't use paper toweling?..I really don't know why...but I have never used fungicide or any other chemicals on the embryos. The only fungus attack I encountered that immediately springs to my mind was in the Clinophylla seed Viru sent Simon..I actually cannot remember another fungus epsode in all my embryo work right at this minute..it was STRANGE!..But those embryos looked nearly all dead the minute I looked at them upon extraction..and that is the reason they supported the fungus.

I know that embryos that are dead/near dead at the time they are extracted from the seed (rare event) or any dead tissue left on live embryos (like bits of testa) will definitely make a fungus culture.....So make sure the embryos are washed very well and that you have removed all of the inner circular layer of the testa. The key to knowing they are completely extracted with no testa debris stuck on them, is that they should have a uniform pearly white shiny appearance all over them, with no blemishes or dull patches on them at all.

The most likely reason why bits of the inner testa may remain on the embryo surface and cause fungus-in-culture, is that the embryos were too dry (and/or dead), and the inner circular layer was stuck onto the embryo surface. Be mindful of this. If the embryos do not "slip out" of the opening you have created in the testa, put them in water until they hydrate, so that they "slip out" cleanly without foreign debris stuck onto them. Foreign debri from the inner testa will remain partly stuck on the surface of dry/dead/near dead embryos that were forced out by scraping them out of the testa.. This is exactly what happened with my clinophylla run (see notes above posted a few months ago about that run).

I am still working on the idea of just direct planting of the mature embryos in seed raising mix. I am starting to get some very good results with this idea. If it continues to work this well for me, then I will be using it all the time in preference to jar culturing for my embryo work. I'll post more about this when I have done a whole lot of runs, to be sure what I am talking about its reproducible.

Good luck Bernhard, and please post more about what you are doing with your embryos!

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

CORRETION.. in the passage above I wrote...

>>>>>>I know that embryos that are dead/near dead at the time they are extracted from the seed (rare event)<<<<

it should read:

>>>>>>I know that embryos that are dead/near dead at the time they are extracted from the seed (NOT SO RARE AN EVENT)<<<<<

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Bernard, it looks like you are off to a good start.

>> Some others are threaten by fungi, esp. the cotyledons, particular the damaged areas

I have had success eradicating this type of white fungus using tebuconazole (Bayer Advanced 3-in-1) at the standard rate of application. Just mix up a small amount and apply it with a spoon to wet the seedling, repeat after a week.

I usually wait two or three weeks before transplanting the seedlings into soil. This gives time for the roots to form.

Don't give up. Es ist noch kein Meister Vom Himmel gefallen.

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

>>Why are some of your embryos stained yellow (are you applying fungicide to them)?

George, I've no fungicede used. It was the only one germ with this pale yellow colour. I was first assuming that it is possibly an albino. Later, when exploring it closer I found a kind of skin covering the embryo, maybe a part of the inner testa ? But it was still to late (morituri te salutant)

Don, thank you for your recipe. Your German is great!

will not forget to say : Happy easter to all!

cheers
Bernhard

Re: Direct planting of MATURE rose seed/rose embryo..an attempt at skipping embryo culture

Benhard,

I just realised that in your first photo (on your blog) there is a cotyledon part with no radicle that you seem to have included in the culture. I would personally not include this, as it will only ever die, and will cause fungus in the culture.

Embryonic hypocotyl pigmentation

Don,

This is a first for me!

Have you seen such embryonic hypocotyl pigmentaion before? (Embryo pictured today, day 4 of jar culture, just prior to being buried in seed raising mix for germination).

Could this pigmentation predict anything in the resulting seedling/plant in your experience?

Re: Embryonic hypocotyl pigmentation

The other two sibbling embryos from the same hip are pictured below, for comparison...

Sibbling 1

Re: Embryonic hypocotyl pigmentation

Sibbling 2

MORE OBSERVATIONS /SUMMARY OF 12 MONTHS OF ROSE EMBRYO WORK:

I would like to share with all you that may be interested in embryo work, some of the most important observations I have noticed, as well as my own speculations, from my own embryo work with roses over the last 12 months.

I am definitely noticing that some embryos just fail to "activate / germinate" whatever I do with them. A lot of these are the ones that have their inner testa stuck against the embryo surface, and fail to "slip out" easily once part of the testa is cut open (so you have to scrape them out...lol). I am speculating now that these "stuck" embryos were not quite ready for germination at the point of collection of the hip, even thought the hips were well colored and "ripe"..These stuck embryos likely needed more time to ripen (perhaps embryo "ripeness" is signalled by the development of a gap between the inner testa coat and the embryo, with some lubricating substance forming between these surfaces which facilitates this slippage??).

Of course for comparison, from the same colored (ripe) hips we often get the embryos that EASILY slip out of their testa, as soon as they hit the glass of water (assuming an exit slit has been made in the testa coat). I can predict with some certainty now, that those that slipped out easily from their testa, (by whatever method of extraction) are very likely the germinators out of the colony...the performance of the other "non-slippers" is at best questionable, at least in my experience.

For example, looking back at Simon's R.clinophylla x OP seeds whose embryos I cultured in the jar (see entries further up about this culture), I remember very well that only two or three of all the embryos actually slipped out with ease, the rest had to be teased out.. I remember emailing Simon and telling him that I expected only 2 or so germinations the minute this happened..I am not surprised that these were the final germination results of that culture (3 germinations). I now speculate that the majority of my other R.clinophylla x OP embryos that were "stuck" in their testa coat, must have been late germinators, and unripe at the time of the culture (rather than "almost dead/dead" which is what I had originally assumed)......and so, as they remained in their suspended animation in the jar culture they stood NO CHANCE of ever germinating, as they were not ripe at the time their achene was removed for the culture..They very probably would have all germinated if sown directly in germinating medium...and probably would have been the late ones to germinate.

Simon's great sowing success with the same batch of R.clinophylla x OP seed is what actually got me thinking about why all this discrepancy had occurred. If Simon had not got great success sowing the same achene I would have just passed it off as just "bad seed", which was clearly NOT the case. I would never have thought beyond the obvious "they were dead for whatever reason" thinking..So it was fortuitous and very instructional..and in the end more knowledge has been gained out of all of these observations.

I am really starting to think/speculate that well colored ripened hips contain a percentage of unripe embryos (those that appear to be dry and stuck to their testa coat)...they are probably not simply "just very dry" even though they look that way at a first glance..they are likely "not ripe"" to germiante even though their hips were ripe. I speculate that most of these embryos all proabably die in the jar culture or plastic bag culture, or any other culture for that matter....not becasue they were "not viable" or necessarily "fungus infected" (sure, they become fungus magnets as soon as they die, and also if they are alive but with bits of testa stuck on their scraped surface which itself is dead tissue and attracts bad bugs..lol).

If there is some truth in this speculation, then the implication of course is that embryo culture risks losing the late-germinating (unripe) embryos of that colony..which if true, is really too bad. Of course, the risk of this embryo culture loss has to be weighed against the risk of losses by conventional sowing of the same achene.

I am now comparing some jar culture versus some direct planting of embryos derived from colored (ripe) hips, to see how one performs against the other, using embryos from the same hip/plants. There seems to be no great difference that would worry me any more, now that I have fine-tuned things a bit. I am personally doing away with the jar culture, and now direct planting embryos that are derived from hips which have colored well.

Re: MORE OBSERVATIONS /SUMMARY OF 12 MONTHS OF ROSE EMBRYO WORK:

The more I think over the last few years of dabbling in various embryos of fruits (other than from rose), I can definitley also say that in my experience, I have had the best percentage in embryo germinations in such fruits (olive, sour orange, lemon) from fruits that were picked right at the end of the season, compared to their early counterparts which had only just started to change color.

So, for any future embryo work I chose to do, I am definitely going to be using hips that are maximally ripened/colored, say just before wrinkling sets in. I am guessing such hips will contain the most/optimal number of "ripe" embryos.

Embryos that are

Please excuse the extreme length of this post..please feel free to discuss the findings I present here....they may not be new findings at all. I cannot know for sure, but they are new to me, so here goes:

What follows are a few observations which seem to be supporting my more recent speculation about some embryos being "physiologically-UNRIPE-for-germination" even though they are derived from ripe hips/achenes...(these I believe are the later germinator siblings).

Please consider these latest observations of mine:

I deliberately collected some totally shrivelled dry-to-the bone hips from some "found rose", and removed a few embryos from the achenes which looked pretty sad (ie. dullish looking embryos, not plump and pearly white)....remember this is what my Viru-R.clinophylla embryos looked like, most of which died in the jar... WELL...I immersed these "physiologically-UNRIPE-for-germination" embryos in a glass of water continuously for weeks..they did NOT rot!!...actually after about four weeks of this continuous water immersion, they started to sprout radicals and became pearly white, and later germinated into normal seedlings (yes you read it correctly)....and all in a glass of water, without any jar cultures or any other physical or chemical interventions. There was no sign of fungus at all pre, during, and post germination.

To further test this idea, I also collected achenes from a different rose altogether (R.multiflora this time, I must have collected 200 or so achenes altogether) from hips that had maximally colored but not shrivelled.....again I came across a lot of these vey dull useless looking embryos....the sort I KNOW do not culture in the jar..they just disintegrate before my eyes after sitting there for a few days doing nothing except collect mould after they die..actually I only found about 2 pearly embryos out of about 30 multiflora achenes!! (so less than 10% "physiologically-RIPE-for-germination" embryo rate if you like)....Remember these hips were not shrivelled so it cannot be a simple "dehydration phenomenon".

So I took the remaining multiflora achenes from this "less than 10% viability" batch and immersed them continuously in a glass of water, and after about 5-6 weeks, I could see the achene sutures opening up and swollen seeds peeking out of these splits, and...eventually...sprouting has now started to occur out of a few of these very swollen partially split achenes!

To be fair here, I have been doing this "water trick" to germinate my vegetable seeds for years (eg. chili, tomato, cucumber etc etc.). So I figured why not rose??

I then opened up some of these partially split achenes which had not yet actually sprouted, to check out the state of the embryo within. It was real easy to open the achenes up... no need to use box cutter knives etc here..I just simply flicked both halves of the achene open (as they were nearly fully open anyway..lol) using the edge of a pair of scissors (or whatever else similar happened to be lying around)..and exposed the seeds..I removed the testa with great ease, as the testa was pretty much reduced to nothing, and BINGO..there they were..nearly every embryo was pearly white and plump..(compare this to less than 10% from the same batch of achenes which had not received the "water treatment").

ALL of of these embryos that I removed from their testa coverings are now germinating rapidly in a glass of water....(no jar culture, no chemical additives etc etc)....in fact I could have just as well planted them directly in the seed raising mix, now that I can see how active they are in a glass of water...It is MOST intriguing to me to see that seed rotting does not occur in certain vegetable seed types when sitting in water for many many weeks..yes they go all mouldy and brown and horrible looking, just as these rose achenes did, and..then they sprout..some early, some weeks and weeks later.

I am expecting to see a whole range of sproutings to continue in my little glass of multiflora achenes, now that a few have gone all the way to sprouting. It will be real cool to see how long the longest one will take to germinate.

SUMMARY:

1.Some rose embryos act like they are "physiologically-UNRIPE-for-germination" when submitted to jar embryo culture, or if planted directly in seed raising mix...whereas other siblings from the same hip germinate almost immediately by either method. I have now (after one year of the occasional dabbling in all this) found such unripe embryos in fairly significant numbers from both well-ripened hips, as well as in overly-ripened/shrivelled hips.

2.Such rose embryos (from R.multiflora and one other "found" rose at least), seem to respond dramatically to being sumberged in water for a period of time, even several weeks..they seem to convert over to "physiologically-RIPE-for-germination" type embryos, which promptly start to germinate even in pure water, once extracted from their swollen and partially split achenes.

3.I speculate (but now with some supporting evidence), that immediate jar embryo culture of such "physiologically-UNRIPE-for-germination" embryos, without regard to "water rescue" therapy risks loss of all the latter embryos. I suspect this is what happened with a batch of R.clinophylla embryos earlier this year, and looking back now, many other similar instances over the past 12 months or so, where I attempted to jar culture (or directly plant) embryos that did not slip out of their testa covering with ease, and generally had a very dull, non-pearly, rather grey and brittle appearance. They died, and supported mould growth upon their death.

4.My observations also lead me to believe that continuous water immersion of R.multiflora achenes, after removing them from their hips, seems a very simple method of cleanly breaking open the achene suture, requiring zero special skill...and with the added bonus of fully activating the population of "physiologically-UNRIPE-for-germination" embryos (these I have now come to expect within any normal population of rose achenes).

R.multiflora achene is one of the easier of the rose achenes to sprout..I selected it because it was the only type I had available to me in sufficiently large numbers, to do this little comparison-type experiment.

It will now be fun for me to try and reproduce this "sprouting in a glass of water" and see if it works more generally on other rose achenes (e.g R.canina R.gigantea and huge HT-type achenes)......nothin' to lose I guess!

Re: Embryos that are

It'd be pretty useful in the huge ones found in some species tha take eons to germinate (or fail to altogether)

Re: Embryos that are subject to continuous water immersion treatments...

Yea, maybe the constant water action might cleave open really tough suture unions as you say....and lead to sprouting in the glass thereafter....who knows.

Truth is, at the moment I have no such achenes to test out..but anyone can now try it out for themselves and let us know if it was a worthwhile thing....the main thing would be not to be tricked into thinking that the seed has rotted becasue of its moulded and dark appearance..this is a normal development. If it will work, it will take TIME which of itslef requires no expenditure of resources.

Re: Embryos that are subject to continuous water immersion treatments...

George,
I almost got goose-bumps reading about your discoveries. I can hardly wait to try it out with some rose seeds I've got laying around. I just never had thought to try water-soaking with rose seeds, even though I routinely soak iris seeds for weeks sometimes and also vegetable seeds like you mentioned. Thank you very much for sharing your findings. I'll let you know if I have any luck with my seeds.
Tom

Re: Embryos that are subject to continuous water immersion treatments...

Hi Tom.

Yea, hope it proves useful to some people, that's why I decided to let y'all know what I had noticed...time will tell whether this is a reproducible thing.

Re: Embryos that are subject to continuous water immersion treatments...

The main reason for me developing this embryo thread here, rather than just give up the ghost (after the initial novelty factor wore off), was more to try and figure out what embryos like and dislike, and how a real simple solution might one day possibly be found for germinating difficult-type rose achenes, which a child could do. I do find embryo extractions rather repetitive tedious and extremely uninspiring, however in this regard, embryo work has grown to be more like a "research tool" in my case.

I can see the day soon when I will not be using embryo work much at all, once it has answered the questions it has itself raised in my mind about rose achenes/seeds/embryos.

Re: Embryos that are subject to continuous water immersion treatments...

Just my views, that's all..please feel free to comment/criticize/throw bricks.. wateva LOL.

Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

Here is a R.multiflora achene suture cleaving open due soley to the action of continuous water soaking after many weeks...the seed within is swelling up and starting to poke out from its "radicle pole".

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

Here is a different view of the same process leading to suture cleavage:

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

These embryos were extracted only from the swelling/splitting achenes (just like those shown in the above pictures), and were submitted to three days of further saoking in a small glass of water. They are germianting very fast, and all of them are behaving the same vigorous way.

No embryos that I have sampled from such splitting water-soaked achenes have behaved in any way other than what you see in this picture, once removed from testa and water-soaked for a few more days:

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

Here is my first water-soaked R.multiflora achene which germinated in a glass of water..I buried it the day before yesterday in seed raising mix, but pulled it out today to show you..I can see that the radicle has about doubled its length, and thickened, since initial planting.

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

It would also be interesting to me, to see how long-term water soaking WITHOUT cold stratification compares in those achenes where a period of cold seems to be essential to the germination process... I don't know why I am saying this, only that it just makes me wonder.....I don't have such achenes to test out at the moment, too bad.

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

"Osmositic pressure gradients" exist where on one side of any partition there is a greater concentration of water molecules, compared to the other side of the partition. This difference in water molecule density always causes a NET flow of water molecules from the more water-dense side (eg the liquid water in the glass) to the less water-dense side (the achene/embryo system), assuming of course that the barrier (the achene in our case) permits water to cross it.

So what I am suggesting here is that this water-soaking is just a super-blast of water, compared to a trickle of water that we normally apply to achenes anyway, when we ensure our seeds are stratifying in damp conditions....In other words, we are already doing this "soaking" when we damp stratify, but in a less "pressurised" manner.

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

Interesting also is the observation that grey mouldy colonies, even scums, are forming on these submerged achenes....and these seemed to form quite early on in the water-soaking...these are the same sort of moulds I imagine that people talk about seeing on their stratified achenes..I know some people on this forum believe that these fungi could play a beneficial role in the process of germination...they sure are present and thriving here!

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

For your entertainment, below is a water-soaked achene now just hours from sprouting its radicle...(reminds me of a turtle..LOL...)

I'm pretty sure this one I've just pulled outta the water to picture here, is the same as one of those I pictured above yesterday, as I selected the "most cleaved sutured ones" yesterday, to take those pictures.........so this gives you an idea of the rapid anabolic growth going on in the embryo underneath over just 24hrs, when comparing pictures from yesterday.

Also, a word or two about those embryos I extracted from this batch pictured above, which proved that the water-soaking did not drown the embryos, but instead switched them over into "germination mode"...just for fun, I am going to see exactly how they behave when left in this glass of water....could they sprout out of the glass?! A few months ago I would not have even DARED consider this..LOL..

Interestingly, so far none of these vigorously germinating embryos in the glass of water, have shown any signs of failure to grow radicles/rootlets, failure to gain mass and grow, dying etc etc..Such abnormalities were often observed in a percentage of jar-cultured embryos I used to extract in the past straight from ripe hips/achenes, and I could not explain why this was so...but at that time, I had not thought that there may exist a population of physiologically-UNRIPE-for-germination embryos, within ripe hips/achene fruits....which were VERY water thirsty!...I now believe it is these "unripe ones" that were behaving abnormally..like they were partly alive but not fully alive, like their batteries were not charged up to go full steam into germinating..they sometimes started to grow then stopped then died, or else never started to grow sat there and died.

To counter this trouble I had developed an idea that they clearly were not able to assimilate water, and I used to submit them to "water resuscitation" which seemed to benefit them initially, but once out of the water after a day or two, they again withered, often dying fast.... At the time, I lacked knowledge as to exactly how long a "water resuscitaion" they required to get them to become fully "battery charged", if you like. I would not have dared to keep them in water for weeks if required, I always wrongly assumed thay would have rotted..

Thanks for reading, hope this makes sense.

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

Actually, now that I look back at it, the picture above reminds me more of a clam than a turtle, must laugh at myself!

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

For the sake of completeness, below is pictured the first of the water-soaked R.multiflora achenes to sprout..now fully germinated, approximately one week now after it started to sprout in the glass of water.

Looks quite ok.

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

I'm gonna keep this one as my future roostock supply, as it was such a little performer for me..lol!

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

These water-soaked achenes which are still in the glass of water, are still loving it, there is about to be an en-masse sprouting from that batch.. I never kept a date as to when I started the soaking, but is must be getting close to 8 weeks..wateva..

The control embryos immersed in the glass of water developed long extensions/hypocotyls, got a little green then did drown eventually, which is no surprise.

Watching this very simple water-soaking experiment unfold has been real fun for me, and continues to amaze me. I wonder how long the longest-to-sprout achene will take to sprout in the glass of water?

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

It seems to me that the "not quite ripe for germination" seeds may really be a survival mechanism not unlike many other seeds, that insures its' survival in case of fire, excessive animal populations causing the eradication of 'mother' plants, prolonged weather (excess rain, excessive drought) conditions not conducive to the survival of the seedling, etc. Most species have some internal time clocks that allow for the sprouting of some but not all seeds in any given time period for this very reason. Even then, when conditions are right, a larger amount of the seeds will sprout in seasons that support their survival, but even so an amount will remain dormant, sometimes for many more years, until such a time that most of them sprout. I don't believe this has anything to do with unripe, or immature seeds. It is simply natures' way of insuring survival.

I linked to a local botanist's journal on the sprouting of Nelumbo seeds, which have been known to sprout after 1000 years. The parallels are uncanny.

Link: http://www.victoria-adventure.org/lotus/lotus_letters1.html

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

Yes, this is exactly what appears to be happening with these achenes, also. Nature is incredible, isn't it.

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

Hi all.

This time I repeated my simple experiment of germinating a few R. Multiflora achenes (n=14) in a glass of water, (immediately after they were shelled out of ripe red hips), at room temperature. This time, I kept dates, to get more time-exact results. We are in our winter here, diurnal temperature ranges over the past few weeks have been in the order of about 45F-65F.

This soak was started on June 10.....this is the first one to sprout out of the 14:



I must have missed it when it started to sprout a few days ago as the light was poor due to overcast rainy conditions, and I was obviously not really looking carefully enough! I guess there is about 4 days worth of sprouting showing in this picture, which was taken a few minutes ago......so say this one commenced sprouting after ~30 days of soaking.

I am most curious as to how long the longest sprouting time will be....I'll post the results as soon as I know.

Also pictured here (just for a bit of fun), is a photo I took a few minutes ago of the R. Multiflora seedling that germinated for me in water, which I had pictured in the Wednesday May 26 entry further up this thread.....this gives you an idea of its behavior as a seedling in the ensuing couple of months of its life:



LOL..after reviewing this last photo, I spotted a grub in the photo which I had missed in reality..LOL!....it had succumbed to the slug baits..these baits have saved countless seedlings from slug/grub damage, they have been invaluable for me!!

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr


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Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

ignore the above entry..i am trying to work out why photobucket html-coded images cannot upload onto the body of the message, whereas with freeimage hosting the html code for the photo does upload here...weird and frustrating stuff!!

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

George- On Photobucket I have no problem posting if I delete the.. Http://[IMG] .. at the beginning and the.. [IMG] ..at the end. Nothing else added or changed.

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

Hi Jackie!

Yeah, what you say is exactly right...what you advise is exactly how I too have been uploading single images for each message, using Photobucket.

I think I didn't explain my troubles yesterday well enough!!

Actually, yesterday I was trying to see if Photobucket could be used to replicate what I was able to do in the message you see with two images, separated by commentary in the same message (I did this yesterday using Free Image Hosting, and Jim's Sproul's great tricks on how this is done).....trouble is, it seems these same tricks don't work when using Photobucket.

I guess I'll just start using Free Image Hosting from now on, unless you, Jackie, or any other folks here can be kind enough to explain how this can be done using Photobucket (nearly all my images are on Photobucket ATM).

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking

test message,

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking Posted by George Varden (Zone 10) [email] on Wed, Jul 14, 2010 I did not delete the image even though it was deleted....no more testing..what I am trying doesn't work with photobucket.. movin on now..LOL!

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking Posted by Adam Eckstein [email] on Fri, Jul 16, 2010 George if you right click on the broken image above on this page an select (View Image Info), then maximize that screen, You can see the code that is found on this page, The last line of directions for the computer to follow is yours, If you look at that compared to the others you will notice (%3E%3Cbr%20/%3Etesting%20to%20see%20if%20an%20image%20appears%20here,%20or%20not...%3C/td%3E%3C/tr%3E%3C/table%3E%3Chr%20noshade%20size=) behind (.jpg) this is what is causing your pictures to come up broken. I have never used photo bucket but try deleting everything after the .jpg I have tried posting the image below doing it from here but I do not know if I can do it without being logged on to photo bucket. But I guess we will find out.

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking Posted by Data Recovery [email] on Sun, Jul 25, 2010 Pen drive data recovery software restores missing MS office word documents, songs, video movies and compressed uncompressed data. Link: http://www.datadoctor.biz

Re: Attempting germination of rose achene/seed/embryo by continuous water soaking Posted by George Varden (zone 10, southern hemisphere) [email] on Tue, Aug 3, 2010 Although I am not deliberately using embryo extraction / culture any more as a preferred means of getting rose achene germinations, I still think there is value in documenting how the embryos behave with water soaking them and then getting them to progress to live seedlings. This new method of embryo germinations I have dabbled in lately seems far superior to two previous methods I had used (1.jar culture, and 2. planting unsprouted embryos in seed raising mix). I decided to put this new water-soaking embryo method to a real test by running a few "live cases" here. The cases I would like to present here in the near future are totally random, and will be in real-time, so I will have no more idea of the outcome than you will! It invloves next to no time and effort for me, and maybe some of you may benefit from the knowledge...all I need is the odd OP rose hip! At the very least I hope some of you find it fun to just watch! CASE 1: Flower Carpet White X OP, pictured today (after 7 days of water soaking). No stratification, derived from an orange/red hip (there was only achene in that small hip): Next time I'll also start posting pictures of the hips and maybe the achenes before the extractions are done. As soon as I decide to plant this one, I'll show you what it looks like just before planting, and then I'll track its progress until germination (or failure).

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