Agapanthus - Advice Needed O' Wise Ones!
 

Hello! I am new to the forum. I know a but about plants but am learning lots more all the time.

Can someone advise please? I have 2 beautiful Agapantha Plants whose flowers have just turned to seed heads. Most are still green.

I would like to try and grow some more plants from seeds, (I understand that it will take at least 3 years for the plants to flower).

My question is - can I use the green seeds or do I need to wait until they have dried on the plant?

Alternatively, can I remove them now and dry them off the plant?

Your help is appreciated.

Agapanthus - Advice Needed O' Wise Ones! (and a little seed biology)
 

Hello! I am new to the forum. I know a but about plants but am learning
lots more all the time.

Can someone advise please? I have 2 beautiful Agapantha Plants whose
flowers have just turned to seed heads. Most are still green.

I would like to try and grow some more plants from seeds, (I understand
that it will take at least 3 years for the plants to flower).

My question is - can I use the green seeds or do I need to wait until
they have dried on the plant?

I haven't experimented with Agapanthus, but the safe thing to do is to
wait until the fruits have started to dry down on the plant, then remove
and plant the seed.

Since you probably have a number of fruits on the plant, you might want
to live slightly dangerously, and remove a fruit every other day or so,
open it gently, and immediately plant the seeds within. .

Seeds go through a series of phases of maturation... the embryo is
created (and quite often, that's viable if you want to try to grow it
much like a tissue-culture project!), the endosperm (storage tissue)
forms and matures, and finally, with both embryo and endosperm (or other
storage tissue in some seeds) completely physiologically mature, the
fruit starts drying down, readying the seeds for dispersal.

Sometimes (and this is highly species-dependent) you can shorten the
germination time for some seeds from months or weeks to a few days --
that's because the mechanisms that allow seeds to remain dormant for a
bit are usually added toward the end of the maturation phase. If you
catch the seeds at just the right age, when they've got enough storage
reserves to grow well, but before the dormancy factors are "added",
you can get seedlings up and growing quickly. May or may not
be worth your time to experiment, but it can be fun to do so.

Kay

Agapanthus - Advice Needed O' Wise Ones!
 

Amberlabamba wrote:
Hello! I am new to the forum. I know a but about plants but am learning
lots more all the time.

Can someone advise please? I have 2 beautiful Agapantha Plants whose
flowers have just turned to seed heads. Most are still green.

I would like to try and grow some more plants from seeds, (I understand
that it will take at least 3 years for the plants to flower).

My question is - can I use the green seeds or do I need to wait until
they have dried on the plant?

Alternatively, can I remove them now and dry them off the plant?

Your help is appreciated.

What you see on the stalk is a cluster of seed pods. The seeds are
inside.

Wait until the first pod starts to split open. Then remove the entire
stalk, cutting near the base. Remove each pod and let them slightly dry
in the shade. Then you can open the pods and remove the seeds. See my
http://www.rossde.com/garden/garden_start_seeds.html for starting the
seeds.

Note, however, that the plant itself will send out side shoots and
spread. While this is slow, it will be faster than getting flowering
plants from seed.

By the way, the name of the plant is Agapanthus (singular or plural),
not Agapantha. Sepcifically, it's A. orientalis. The common name is
"lily of the Nile".

--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 21 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a, very close to Sunset Zone 19)
Gardening pages at http://www.rossde.com/garden/