Author Topic: FUN WITH PROPAGATING TROPICALS By Jean Niemi  (Read 3263 times)

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FUN WITH PROPAGATING TROPICALS By Jean Niemi
« on: October 22, 2006, 05:37:11 PM »
This is a tutorial my good friend Jean Niemi wrote for a website I created for her many years ago located at http://www.geocities.com/jeanhonolulu/ . I know many of you could benefit from Jean's tutorial.

FUN WITH PROPAGATING TROPICALS   By Jean Niemi – December 2001

VIVIPAROUS LEAVES:   When I read Sean Stevens method of propagating viviparous tropical water lilies (http://members.shaw.ca/seansponds/), I was absolutely elated!   I had read about different methods for getting my tropical water lilies to produce viviparous plantlets more quickly, but in spite of all I tried, they were just too slow, or I had poor success.  Hawaii’s tropical climate allows year-round growth of tropical water lilies, but without the cold weather conducive to corm production and rapid growth, it usually took at least a year or more for my viviparous tropicals to produce additional plantlets, and mediocre sizes and vigor at that!

After reading Sean’s tutorial on the Water Gardening Forum, I couldn’t wait to get started.  Sean’s method promised bigger, better, and bolder plantlets!   I immediately gathered all the spare dishpans I could find in the house, plus some plastic hospital trays.  I purchased the 75-Watt Agro-Lite  bulbs from Home Depot (for less than $5), as well as the clamp-on light holders (about $8 to $12), and proceeded with my setup.



The pink hospital trays shown above (size 14” x 10” by 4 ½ “ high) are perfect for at least two to three large leaves.  I received them from a friend who had recently been in the hospital, so If you can find anyone who can supply these, they are ideal.  The Agro-Lite bulbs are bluish/turquoise in color and give the proper spectrum of light for rapid growing of plants indoors, according to Sean. The bottom of the lights should be at least 4 to 5 inches from the water’s surface, but because I used some dining room chairs to prop up the lamps, my lights were spaced between 6 to 10 inches above.  Compared to the 14 to 16 hours Sean recommended, I prolonged the lighting time to about 18 hours a day.  Each morning, my husband, Ed, would turn the lights on at 6 a.m.  and I would take them off at midnight.  Naturally, my leaves took a little longer to sprout than Sean’s.

Full spectrum aquarium lights also work for growing these plants indoors, according to other sources.  Other options are the 400 watt halide bulb that Sean uses, placing them about 4 feet above the water’s surface, as well as the 100 watt ceiling light shown here:



I gathered all the leaves I could from my tropical Lindsey Woods water lily, and some river rocks.  Leaving the center hubs exposed, I anchored the leaves below the water’s surface, adding enough water to cover them a minimum of 2 inches.  My thanks to Craig Presnell, who provided me with the water lily….Craig is the coveted Banksian Medal award winner of “Serendipity” at the International Water Garden Society Symposium  in 2001.

The leaves that you collect should have a noticeable brown “hump” in the center.  Examine them by placing your hand over them to create a shadow, and be sure the hump is brown and not green.  Leave about an inch of stem attached to each leaf.  Even partially yellowed leaves will rapidly grow into these plantlets.  Be prepared to lose a few leaves, however, since some may be too young to give off plantlets.  These leaves will slowly decompose and should be discarded to prevent bacteria from forming in the trays.



I also experimented by cutting the leaves to reduce their size and to hasten growth of the plantlets, but, just as Sean explained, larger leaves result in larger plantlets, giving them a much faster start to blooming size.  Yellowed leaves will give smaller plantlets since the decomposing leaf will quickly drop off the plantlet.

To check the water temperature, I used my kitchen roasting thermometer and maintained a temperature of about 80 degrees F.  After a day or two (and daily thereafter), I had to replenish the water that had evaporated due to the hot lamps.

With about four lamps and sufficient trays, I sat back and waited for some results.  With each passing of the living room, I anxiously peered at the trays, looking for some sign of activity.  On about the third day, to my delight, this is what appeared!



The emerging leaves appear to be the shape of a taro leaf, dark colored and almost brittle, and can easily break off if not handled gently.  I could see the small humps getting larger, and on the 4th day, leaves started to unfurl…there was definitely viviparous growth!  I was elated and quickly wrote to Sean to give him my latest progress report on what we jokingly called my “mad scientist” experiment!



In a few days, more leaves emerged, and tender roots started to form at the plant base.  After a few more leaves appeared, the plantlet was potted and placed in one of my tubs outdoors.



To make room for more leaves, I did not wait for roots to form on two or three plantlets, but proceeded to plant them with the aid of a  rooting powder.  Sean stated the hormone powder is not really necessary.  They were planted in 6 inch pots and placed in the garden (this is December in Hawaii), and they remain rapidly growing.



The following photo shows a two-week-old viviparous plantlet with two large leaves.  Notice the large original leaf still attached to the viviparous growth.  By cutting the large leaf off, more roots began to develop and showed just as much vigorous growth when planted outdoors:



In the beginning of my experiment, I had more leaves than trays, so the excess leaves were placed in Lerio pots in a hot sunny area of my garden.  Sean explained they would eventually grow after a longer period of time, but being impatient, I quickly moved them indoors as soon as space became available in the trays from the rapidly growing ready-to-pot plantlets.

If the trays accumulated too much debris from decomposing leaves, I rinsed and cleaned out the trays and gave them a fresh supply of warm water and continued the growing process.  For some, all that was needed was to scoop up the rotting leaves off the water’s surface.  The leaves remained submerged with rocks until they were ready to be removed and planted into individual pots.

TUBER PROPAGATION.  Sean sent me a tiny little tropical lily tuber from Canada.  It survived the long transit time and grew so rapidly and vigorously that I wondered how he managed to grow it so fast.  He had just promised me only a week or two ago that he would “grow out” a tuber and would send it to me. The tiny little tuber had so many divisions (I counted at least a dozen!) that I was flabbergasted!

To my delight, a few weeks later, I finally learned his “secret” from his web page that contained his article “Topical Water Lily Tuber Propagation.”   Well, I used the same lights that I had used for my viviparous leaves, placing my tubers in a glass jar and here are some results:

From this:



To this:



I am so grateful to Sean for sharing his knowledge and expertise on growing these viviparous tropical water lilies.  Without him, I would still be patiently waiting for my plants, wondering when they would appear and wishing that my tropicals would reproduce more quickly.  I have not been able to bloom the plantlets in the 20 days that Sean indicated in his tutorial, for I rely on the hot tropical sun to bring my plantlets to bloom.

There is so much joy in watching these plantlets emerge.  Every day brought a new joy, an excitement that another leaf had unfurled….until finally, there appeared a beautiful water lily in my garden.  Now I can share these lilies with friends and enthusiasts all over our water lily world.  Thank you, Sean.



Update as of March 1, 2002

Here are a couple photos of one of the Lindsay Woods viviparous starts that were originally put under light on November 22nd 2001. As you can see the whole process works quite well and produces beautiful waterlilies.





Vancouver BC Zone 8B
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