I got in some Euphorbia milii in the last round of tropicals (beginning of March), and found that one of them had a weird, deformed-looking . . . thing on it that I'd never seen before.
WCW and I suspect it may be a successfully-pollinated flower, but it's difficult to be certain, since 1) we've never seen a successful pollination before and 2) when I look at this, "successful" is not one of the words that comes to mind. .jpg)
It could also be some weird, crested-type growth. Something damaged, maybe. We do not know. (Between this and yesterday's Clarkia post, I expect that some readers are getting the impression that we don't know much of anything, at work. So not true. We're just having a little, um, dumb spell. It'll pass.)
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If this is a successfully pollinated flower: what do we do with it? What do the seeds look like? How do we try to sprout them? Etc.
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5 comments:
I've never seen one of these - and I've grown my share of the darn plants. Somehow they always promise more than they deliver and eventually get so lanky and unattractive that I toss them out. One thought/question - could this be some kind of insect damage, like a gall? Hard to imagine any insect dealing with them, given their unpleasant thorns, sap, etc. If it does turn out to produce seeds I wonder if they need abrasion (many of the desert plants' seeds get tumbled around during infrequent rains don't they?) We await more news on this peculiar thingy.
I must say I can't tell for sure from the picture, but here's my stab. At first I thought this must be some kind of gall, and looking at the blown-up picture, this seems to be a fairly common genetic mutation that happens at the apical meristem called a fasciation or cristation, like the 'Cristate' forms of cactus. (It could in fact have been set off be a gall wasp, or an insect, midge or nematode!)
Try googling cristation or fasciation and you will see what I mean. Some really beautiful examples can be found.
With branching succulents or cactus, each branch has a growing point, and you can have these undifferentiated meristematic cells going haywire. They can form spines, branches or even flowers.
It's also possible that it is a successfully pollinated flower. But pollinated BY WHAT???? (cue creepy music)
Hmm, does Lovecraft have an eldritch god of plants?
Korina
I'd like to think you could get a number sequence from it that could take you to a new earth.
there was a post on a different website (one you've linked to in fact!) which shows somethign very similar growing on her aloe. Here is the link : http://adesertobserver.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-03-06T13%3A39%3A00-07%3A00
I think it looks very similar to the growth you have on your plant. If its mites, you might wanna trash the infected plants.
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