In article , Sacha writes:
|
| Over lunch I checked into this a bit more. Ray grows ours from cuttings.
| It's Ipomoea learii. He suggests that sowing seed as early as January
| wouldn't go amiss ....

Er, you mean that for the annual Ipomoeas, not I. learii (indica etc.)
The latter is not fertile.

It turns out that the problem is that its pollen doesn't germinate;
that of some other species does (in I. learii flowers), but doesn't
get far down the tube. I enquired in a few quarters if there were
any good descriptions of the physiology of germination in vascular
plants, and got my usual deafening silence. It is a topic that is
rather beyond mere undergraduate courses :-)

But it layers like the devil (just try to STOP it doing so!), as I am
very sure that you know, so its infertility is not normally regarded
as a problem :-)


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.