In article ,
Martin Brown wrote:

Not that easily. If the seeds are very soft, they will be infertile
ones. They require a definite bite, and then get stuck in your
teeth. In nature, some wouldn't get crushed and pass through.

OK. Thanks for that. Wasting my time on these fragile white things then.

Yes.

Any suggestions for the optimum conditions for growing them on?
With without the fleshy pith? Dried and rehydrated or fresh?
Any chance of fruiting one in the UK? Or purely ornamental?

I never got mine to flower, but the leaves are attractively bronzy.

So it is growable in Cambridge but for foliage only. How disappointing!
They flower OK in France but don't get useful fruit. They do look exotic
which is why I fancied trying them.

That was ONE seedling - I was probably just unlucky! Other people
have got them to flower.

And no. They require heat to fruit, and I don't mean a joke like
a few days at 30 Celsius. But they are serious drought-resistant;
mine got dessicated one summer when I was on holiday, lost all its
leaves, and simply grew new ones later. But DON'T plant them in any
soil that might waterlog, even temporarily.

I have no chance then. We are on solid clay. Came back today to find
everything waterlogged after 50mm or rain previous two days. Odd really
since everything was baked hard and brick like after weeks of drought.

Grow them in pots then, with a free-draining John Innes mixture. That's
what I did.

The same applies to Strelitzia - they are both arid terrain plants.

I can just about grow rosemary in the rain shadow of the garage but the
places where drought tolerant plants will grow are very limited.

Ditto. Rosemary also does well in a free-draining John Innes mixture
in a pot - and it doesn't even have to be a big one. I have some in
4" pots that I took for cuttings and have been neglecting for years.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.