Happy New Year! 2011 was the beginning of a new chapter in my orchid hobby, and I am looking forward to continuing the madness in 2012. I started off right, with some ambitious orchid seed flasking.
A while back I ordered dry seeds of a few orchid species from Thailand on eBay. They arrived in tidy little packets, and I popped them in the refrigerator for safe keeping until I could get around to them. I actually only ordered the first two in the picture below; the seller threw in a couple of others. What a nice surprise!
Here's an open packet showing the bright yellow seeds of
Dendrobium pachyphyllum:
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Dendrobium pachyphyllum Seeds
©2012 MadOrchidist.com |
And here are is a closeup of some of the Ascocentrum seeds using my iPhone and an antique dissecting microscope - what a cool combo! If you look closely, you can see the fibers of the white printer paper to give you a sense of how small they are:
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Ascocentrum ampullaceum seeds magnified under my stereo dissecting scope
©2012 MadOrchidist.com |
I got a little ambitious and decided that I would try to sow all four species in one flasking session in the glove box.
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Orderly Preparation - don't want to mix them up!
©2012 MadOrchidist.com |
After numbering and labeling syringes to correspond to the right species and flasks, I got to sterilizing the seeds.
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Orchid Seed Solution
©2012 MadOrchidist.com |
Since my
first attempt hasn't yet shown any contamination, I used the same procedure for these seeds. The biggest difference is that I did four syringes instead of one, and I only used the "filter" cap I made on one of them. The others I just let settle a bit longer after every rinse to avoid squirting out too many seeds.
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Once more into the box
©2012 MadOrchidist.com
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Four at once turned out to be a bit more than was comfortable. It required me to have a lot more stuff in the glove box (multiply empty flasks and sterile water jars by four), and the possibility for cross-contamination or a mix-up seemed high.
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Crowded and Messy in the glove box
©2012 MadOrchidist.com |
Finally, mother flasks of the four species are sealed and out of the box. This took a while, and it made me realize how non-ergonomic my glove box is. I have to hunch over it to get the best view through the acrylic window on top while working, and it gets to my neck eventually.
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New Orchid Flasks
©2012 MadOrchidist.com |
The whitish particles below are a thin layer of seeds and water in a finished flask.
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Orchid seeds in vitro
©2012 MadOrchidist.com |
Here are some representative photos of these species from the
Internet Orchid Species Photo Encyclopedia (click on the name below a photo for more info).
Did you get good germination rate?
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