Hope you have better luck with them. I have NEVER had good luck with Zamia seeds.

The smaller Zamia seeds are a little touchy, once cleaned, they only seem to last about a month.
Find some to clean yourself and you will increase the odds, I usually just fill up a community pot with Zamia seeds barely under the surface and cross my fingers 😀

Steve

First signs of life!

Steve

Spectacular close-up.
Barb

Thanks Barb!

I was fortunate enough to talk with the person who made these available, this is a brown emergent form of Zamia amblyphyllidia

Some more info: http://www.pacsoa.org.au/cycads/Zamia/amblyphyllidia.html

Here's a recent photo,

Steve

great pic Steve. You can see every little hair on that seedling. Are you germinating the seeds and then sitting them on top the soil to root?

Thanks Kent,

These were buried just under the surface, normally they would stay there....
Started them in the converted refrigerator, between 85* - 95*F, and these are growing fast enough to push out of the soil 😀

Steve

Steve,
great photo of the adult zamia in that link.
Seems to be planted in full sun too, which seems a bonus.

The brown emergent sections appear even more delicate than regular ones.
Barb

Noticed a couple more today, these were under the soil yesterday!
(I suppose a lighter mix would help 😀

Steve

As usual, cool pictures.

I wonder just how far a radicle will travel in search of soil?

There must be a limit, and if birds or rodents disturb the seeds, wonder if it'd go, say, a foot?

Yes, it's been a burden to be so darn inquisitive.
I recall my parents sighing a lot when I was a kid. 😆 😆 😆

Barb

Barb,
No real idea ❓ 😀
It would keep growing till the seed was depleted, at that point, it's progress would depend on the plants ability to absorb moisture & nutrients from it's environment.

Thinking of epiphytic Cycads, here is a Zamia pseudoparasitica with a 15 meter root!

http://www.cycad.org/documents/Jun-Sep-2008-Strange-but-True.pdf

Steve

Good point about the seed depletion.

Holy cow, a 15 meter root. That's 49+ feet long!

Cool link, thanks.
Barb

Thinking of epiphytic Cycads, here is a Zamia pseudoparasitica with a 15 meter root!

http://www.cycad.org/documents/Jun-Sep-2008-Strange-but-True.pdf

Speaking of Z. pseudoparasitica, this characteristic of the elongated taproot -- which grows down the trunk of the supporting tree and into the forest floor below -- seems to only happen in certain populations. I have seen trees full of these plants in habitat where none of the plants have such a taproot. Prior to this discovery, it was "understood" that this species loses its taproot to rot early during its development only to be replaced with masses of adventitious roots that grow/anchor into the root masses of surrounding epiphytes like anthuriums, orchids, etc. -- or possibly that the plants never really grew a single taproot to begin with. This is a "paradigm shift" type of discovery that may be one of the most important to occur in the cycad world in many years.

Jody

Jody,

looking forward to hearing more on this! I would like to think we are seeing an evolutionary step 8)

Steve