Byblis gigantea in vitro

From: Brian Cochran (brianc@excelonline.com)
Date: Sun Mar 07 1999 - 15:06:23 PST


Date: Sun, 07 Mar 1999 16:06:23 -0700
From: Brian Cochran <brianc@excelonline.com>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg712$foo@default>
Subject: Byblis gigantea in vitro

I saw a posting about starting Byblis gigantea in vitro and wanted to
add this note that might be of interest.

I tried for at least three years to get Byblis g. that were started in
vitro out into normal soil and hardened off. At the time, I lived near
Ron Gagliardo back when he ran Hungry Plants. He supplied me with
numerous viles and flasks with which to experiment. I failed with all
of them.

Later, Ron told me that he really didn't know of anyone who had been
successful in moving Byblis giganteas from the flasks to normal growing
conditions. He suspected that the plants weren't forming a cuticle
layer (I believe that's correct) which would allow them to harden in the
air. This species is also extremely suseptible to fungus which probably
didn't help matters. To this day, I don't know if anyone has been
successful. I would be curious to hear.

This is why, with Ron's and Allen Lowrie's help, I came upon a reliable
way to start them from gibb-treated seed in milled sphagnum. It is the
only way I recommend. Anyone starting them in vitro may want to hold
back a few seeds just in case they have the same problems I did.

Brian Cochran



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 02 2001 - 17:31:55 PST