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Gemmae sprouts

Many of you will have received gemmae which is hopefully about to sprout for you (mine are coming along well). Although I tried my best to keep all the species well separated, I am sure a gemmae or 2 may have slipped into the wrong packs, since they all look pretty much alike. If you notice a rosette forming that appears different from the majority in the pack, treat this like a weed, and remove it as soon as it is distinctly noted. If it remains in the pot, it will create ID confusion next season when your plants make gemmae.
 
All of the gemmae you sent me are doing great!
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only the Uknown pygmy drosera, "C-1", did not sprout.
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most of the baby pygmies are about this wide, >>>
Thanks for sending them!
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Hi Tamlin ,

Thank you so much for the gemmae so far every thing came up but #19 and out of them C-1 is doing the best with all coming up C-1 is allso a very fast grower .

I put them in there own pots in a dom to keep in the damp air poped the whole thing under a pair of shop lights and every thing seems to be coming along great.

Thanks another .
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Hi Tamlin, I got mine gemmae on the 24th December, it was a nice christmas present from you, almost all of them survive , those that did`t surivive were D. nit. spp. alantostigma and D. roseana
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but the rest survive
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Thank you very much............
Best regards Bjørn in Norway
 
Wow, those pygmy grow fast, I've had my seedlings since october and they are smaller...
I have a question, is a gemmae the haploid generation of the pygmy sundew?  If it is, that is very cool since on most 'seeding' plants you never get to see that stage (lives in the flower, makes the seed/sperm and dies)  
Or am I mixed up?
...:eek:
Which brings up an even less related quesion.  Do VFTs that produce plantlets from their flowers insted of seeds have a mutation that illimanated the alternating generation all together?  Oh that would be so cool!

-Darcie

P.S.  If you have no idea what the heck I just said, I apoligies for being to techie.  I sugest compleatly icnoring my post to avoid confusion or reading a good book on plant evolution and life cycles.
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Its diploid, it's just a clone of the parent plant. Like a leaf or root cutting. A haploid would have to be either an 'egg' or a grain of pollen...
 
Tamlin,

Thanks so much for the gammae. They are all starting to sprout and they look so cute
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How long do pigmy sundews live if conditions remain good?
 
Way Cool,
The pygmy's that I have are recently acquired last season, so I can't say how long their life is. I can tell you that after flowering and gemmae production, the plants are very exhausted, and need rest in slightly drier conditions (I do not tray water them after the gemmae are produced for a couple of months, until strong new spring growth is evident) I know of growers who have kept them for years though. Some like scorpioides and lasiantha get some real character with age: the stems become long and have the old leaves attached to the lengthening stems, really neat looking.

The gemmae grow much more quickly than seed (and yes, the gemmae are diploid: exact clones of the parents genetic makeup). Once they start up, it is only a matter of a month or so before there is a discernable rosette. I love to watch them unfold their arms!

Darcie,
The plantletts that form on Dionaea scapes are another example of vegatative apomixis: non-sexual reproduction, and so not an example of alternation of generations. Plants that had this trait were successful, and passed the genes on. I suppose the trait could have arose as an initial mutation though, and this over time contributed to the success of the plants: the genes were spread through sexual reproduction in the populations until it became a part of the genetic makeup of the species.

BjornNorman,
I should be able to resend at least the D. paleacea roseana after the New Year, and possibly the other too, so don't take it too hard!
 
Tamlin:
Thanks for clearing that up.

Parasuco:
Plants are not like other sexually reproducing organisms. Rather then producing a single cell that devides to form 2 sperm or 1 egg and a 'dead egg', they have alternating generations, I tend to get the two generations mixed up, but basically, one generation creates a cell with 1/2 the number of normal chromosomes, which then begins to go through normal cellular devition to form a small plant that contains a differnt number of chromosomes. Some of the little plants are male, others are female and both will make a final clone cell to be used as egg or sperm. They then meat up with each other to form the next generation of the plant. The generation which is longest lived depends on the group of plants. Anyways, I have trouble keeping it all strait(which names goes with wich and such) if someone who isn't dislexic could explain the concept to people, I would be very thankfull.
 
  • #10
This is reaching back a bit to my botany days, but here goes.

Aquatic plants simply discharged their sperm into water where they eventually met up, and fertilization happened. With the loss the water habitat, landplants had to evolve a strategy. This led to sexual recombination of genetic material.

Sexual reproduction requires 2 steps in plants. The first step in meiosis, where the number of chromosones are reduced by half through cell division, producing a spore. This is the gametophyte generation which is haploid. These cells divide by mitosis, and all the other cells derived from the mitosis are likewise haploid. In flowering plants, both male and female spores can be produced.

Eventually, these cells unite in sexual reproduction, producing a diploid zygote, and this is the beginning of the sporophyte generation.

In flowering plants, the haploid (gametophyte) generation is short lived. In ferns and mosses it occupies the majority of the plants life.
 
  • #11
Hey Darcie,
About the VFT plantletts on flower scapes.... Adrian Slack briefly described in in is book, "Carnivorous Plants" (second edition). I don't have it in front of me, so I'm not going to mis-quote him, but I think he said it has something to do with a random "error" in flower production when conditions are not ideal. I'll have to re-visit the chapter and report back (if I remember....I don't think I'll have much brain function tonight and tomorrow
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  • #12
Thank you very much for the gemmae. I have taken of photo of D. paleacea ssp. roseana and D. ericksoniae x pulchella. Each is just about 1/2 inch in diameter.


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  • #13
As plants have evolved the haploid generation has tended to become smaller and smaller. The pollen grain is actually the entire haploid male plant reduced to just a few cells.
 
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