by michail » Fri Feb 13, 2009 1:44 pm
Hi,
I doubt that keeping an adult plant would be easier than starting from seed. They are very complicated (=almost impossible) to send.
If you have problems germinating, then the problem is that you have old seeds. As I posted once, fresh seeds of Lapageria rosea have almost 90 % germination rate, which declines rapidly with time and especially after drying the seeds. I have tried once germinating dried seeds which were stored for about one year, and the results were less then meager (<1 %). I know that people do manage to germinate succesfully dried seeds, but it is a long and complicated story. Now, what can be done is to send an entire fruit. We did this a couple of times last year and apparently it works. The fruits get squashed, but usually arrive without fungus. In Chile now is the harvesting time for that species, and we will have fresh seeds in about two weeks.
If your problem is that your plants die soon after emerging, especially if you have them in a cool, dark place, it is probably due to fungus.
If the plants die later, then the reason could be the environmental conditions. Temperature and sunlight.
By the way, it is very important to use acid soil! PH 5.0 is a good reference point. Dark, rich soil is best.
There are albine forms of many species, not just Lapageria, but in nature they are rare to extremely rare. For instance, I have never seen a white Lapageria rosea in wild. Colors usually go from pure red to pink or pink speckled with white. The Philesia magellanica is also red, I have never seen other colors. You can obtain white variety of Lapageria rosea though, but we do not have it, since our seeds come from wild plants.
Luzuriaga radicans have white flowers.
