Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1998 08:27:00 EDT From: PTemple001@aol.com To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg3191$foo@default> Subject: Re: U. menziessii giant tuber (I checked - it's not Aprl 1 yet!)
Glenn
>I looked back through all of my CP books (two of Slack's, Cheers',
>Pietropaolo's and Peter D'Amato's) , and none made any mention of tubers
>so large. They just said the plants survived the summer with "tiny
>tubers that are the size and shape of grains of rice."
>Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. The colony is doing very
>well. Does anybody know if this means I should be getting flowers this
>season?
No, nobody knows!
Meanwhile, as far as I know, no-one has ever seen large tubers on this
species. However, the tubers are surounded by a fibrous protection that can
make a small clump of tubers seem like one large tuber. Also, the previous
years' leaf stems dry when dead to leave a vertical tube that also looks like
just more of the same clump. (This tube is probably protection for any flower
bud that tries to emerge in the following year.) So a group of tubers can
appear to be a single big, long object that may fool you unless you remove the
tons of packaging to reveal it as simply a few tiny tubers. (Presumably it
was U. menziessii that evolved into Supermaket Marketing Executives?) I have
never ever witnessed individual tubers growing on their own and bare of
fibrous protection and doubt this occurs except when the tubers are very first
formed and too small to find unless exceedingly patient and knowing where and
when to look.
As to flowering, any mature tuber (rice grain size) can be expected to flower
and this will occur just before or just after the leaves appear. Leaves will
appear about the time that the plant expects seasonal rain. I've no idea if
anyone has ever managed to get the species to change it's clock to recognise
non-southern hemisphere seasons (Stan Lampard and one or two others have with
patience been very successful doing this for tuberous Drosera but I've never
heard anyone claim success with U. menziesii seasonality).
I don't know anyone who has had enough plants to really play with conditions
with U. menziessii. however, I would expect it would flower predictably,
reliably and easily if the wild conditions were mimicked accurately.
Unfortunately, it is quite hard to mimic the exact degree to which the plant
is first seasonally dried and then seasonally wetted. I suspect that best
flowering results have been witnessed by people growing the plants for the
first artifically wet season after the plants were dug from the wild and kept
dry. No-one has ever written an article or news (here on the WEB) describing
repeated success in flowering the plant over several years. I'd love to read
such from anyone if they have succeeded.
Best of luck! A good plant to work on as there's no-one out there claiming to
be a U. menziessii expert!!!
Paul
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