In message , Nick Maclaren
writes

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 :-)

Not that it's a subject on which I am informed, but I was rather
surprised to hear that your received a response of deafening silence.
Assuming that you're talking about pollen germination, rather than seed
germination, there's a review article at

http://www.bio.umass.edu/hepler/PDF's/Taylor%20and%20Hepler_AnnuRevPPPmol
biol_1997_48_461.pdf

There's hints on the web that I. learii is self-incompatible and the
cultivated populations clonal, but I didn't find anything particularly
clear.

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.

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

Rupert (W.Yorkshire) wrote:
"Uncle Marvo" wrote in message
...
Morning Glories.



All I can do is more or less reiterate (iterate) what other folk have said.
The annual (heavenly blue) is a real prima Donna.
Sow April (indoors) and plant into final position at the end of June will
give flowers late July until the first frosts.
The above assumes you transplant several times.
In my area a late June semi chill or a slight breeze will bugga the lot :-)

I just sprinkle seed on top of the pots of cannas and hedychiums which
go outside on April 1st, then forget about them, they start flowering
around mid August and go on until the frosts,

I am having problems with news servers again so am accessing via
google, would appreciat any suggestions for a good service to switch
to. (answers on a post card - email please!)

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| 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 :-)
|
| Not that it's a subject on which I am informed, but I was rather
| surprised to hear that your received a response of deafening silence.
| Assuming that you're talking about pollen germination, rather than seed
| germination, there's a review article at
|
| http://www.bio.umass.edu/hepler/PDF's/Taylor%20and%20Hepler_AnnuRevPPPmol
| biol_1997_48_461.pdf

uk.rec.gardening beats sci.bio.botany :-)

Thanks very much! That is the best one I have seen and I have stored it
for reading later, though I was really hoping for more on the physiology
as distinct from the biochemistry. Most books seem to spend more time on
the equivalent stages of mosses than vascular plants, perhaps because they
are easier to investigate and were studied first.

One question arising from that, which I have been puzzled about for some
years, is a pollen tube part of the receiving flower, or grown from the
pollen grain? Most advanced books assume that you know that, and most
elementary ones don't get that far ....

Never having been in a single biology lesson in my life, I have never been
taught such things :-)

| There's hints on the web that I. learii is self-incompatible and the
| cultivated populations clonal, but I didn't find anything particularly
| clear.

I found one clear paper that I summarised above. I am not sure that I
could find it again!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In message , Nick Maclaren
writes

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| 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 :-)
|
| Not that it's a subject on which I am informed, but I was rather
| surprised to hear that your received a response of deafening silence.
| Assuming that you're talking about pollen germination, rather than seed
| germination, there's a review article at
|
| http://www.bio.umass.edu/hepler/PDF's/Taylor%20and%20Hepler_AnnuRevPPPmol
| biol_1997_48_461.pdf

uk.rec.gardening beats sci.bio.botany :-)

Thanks very much! That is the best one I have seen and I have stored it
for reading later, though I was really hoping for more on the physiology
as distinct from the biochemistry. Most books seem to spend more time on
the equivalent stages of mosses than vascular plants, perhaps because they
are easier to investigate and were studied first.

One question arising from that, which I have been puzzled about for some
years, is a pollen tube part of the receiving flower, or grown from the
pollen grain? Most advanced books assume that you know that, and most
elementary ones don't get that far ....

From http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/1/49

"Two microtubule (MT) cytoskeletal systems coexist in the tubes of
bicellular angiosperm pollens, one in the vegetative (tube) cell of the
male gametophyte and the other in the generative cell within it."

Google Scholar is your friend.

Never having been in a single biology lesson in my life, I have never been
taught such things :-)

| There's hints on the web that I. learii is self-incompatible and the
| cultivated populations clonal, but I didn't find anything particularly
| clear.

I found one clear paper that I summarised above. I am not sure that I
could find it again!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| One question arising from that, which I have been puzzled about for some
| years, is a pollen tube part of the receiving flower, or grown from the
| pollen grain? Most advanced books assume that you know that, and most
| elementary ones don't get that far ....
|
| From http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/1/49
|
| "Two microtubule (MT) cytoskeletal systems coexist in the tubes of
| bicellular angiosperm pollens, one in the vegetative (tube) cell of the
| male gametophyte and the other in the generative cell within it."

Er, thanks, but mapping that jargon into the related by different verbiage
used by other books and papers takes me quite a lot of effort. Even parsing
that appalling sentence is bad enough! For example, does the terminal "it"
refer to the vegetative cell or the gametophyte?

Computer science papers ("not a science and nothing to do with computing")
papers are often worse, which is disgraceful for what should be an
engineering discipline, of the sort that is used by many people outside
the field. At least the area of angiosperm pollen germination physiology
is of little direct practical relevance to outsiders :-(


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In message , Nick Maclaren
writes

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| One question arising from that, which I have been puzzled about for some
| years, is a pollen tube part of the receiving flower, or grown from the
| pollen grain? Most advanced books assume that you know that, and most
| elementary ones don't get that far ....
|
| From http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/1/49
|
| "Two microtubule (MT) cytoskeletal systems coexist in the tubes of
| bicellular angiosperm pollens, one in the vegetative (tube) cell of the
| male gametophyte and the other in the generative cell within it."

Er, thanks, but mapping that jargon into the related by different verbiage
used by other books and papers takes me quite a lot of effort. Even parsing
that appalling sentence is bad enough! For example, does the terminal "it"
refer to the vegetative cell or the gametophyte?

Computer science papers ("not a science and nothing to do with computing")
papers are often worse, which is disgraceful for what should be an
engineering discipline, of the sort that is used by many people outside
the field. At least the area of angiosperm pollen germination physiology
is of little direct practical relevance to outsiders :-(


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

I was assuming that you were as good as decoding the jargon as me, as I
haven't any formal training (post age 14) in biology either.

Angiosperms, as you may know, have the unusual characteristic of double
fertilisation. One sperm cell fertilizes the egg cell to produce a
diploid zygote, and the other another cell in the female gametophyte to
form the diploid or triploid (depending on clade) endosperm. Angiosperm
pollens either have two or three cells; a vegetative cell, and either
two sperm cells, or a generative cell which divides, post-germination,
into two sperm cells. The reference to bicellular angiosperm pollens
refers to the latter case. The vegetative cell encloses the other cell
or cells.

The key point in the quoted sentence is the reference to the vegetative
cell of the male gametophyte (pollen grain) as a tube cell.

(I've made a start on botancal jargon -
http://www.malvaceae.info/Biology/SexDistribution.html - but I haven't
finished the pages on pollen development and morphology.)
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| I was assuming that you were as good as decoding the jargon as me, as I
| haven't any formal training (post age 14) in biology either.

I wasn't joking when I said I had none whatsoever :-) But, yes, I
understood the words - my problem is that that are very hard to map
to the different words used in another context without knowing the
information I know that I lack!

| Angiosperms, as you may know, have the unusual characteristic of double
| fertilisation. One sperm cell fertilizes the egg cell to produce a
| diploid zygote, and the other another cell in the female gametophyte to
| form the diploid or triploid (depending on clade) endosperm. Angiosperm
| pollens either have two or three cells; a vegetative cell, and either
| two sperm cells, or a generative cell which divides, post-germination,
| into two sperm cells. The reference to bicellular angiosperm pollens
| refers to the latter case. The vegetative cell encloses the other cell
| or cells.

Ye gods and little fishes! No, I didn't know that. That sort of sex is
so far beyond kinky that science fiction hasn't caught up with it :-)

| The key point in the quoted sentence is the reference to the vegetative
| cell of the male gametophyte (pollen grain) as a tube cell.

Thanks VERY much. A lot now falls into place. I am 90% certain that the
term "pollen tube" is used in at least some books and papers both for the
channel down the pistil and the, er, organ that grows down it from pollen
grain. That would account for my long-term confusion, anyway.

| (I've made a start on botancal jargon -
| http://www.malvaceae.info/Biology/SexDistribution.html - but I haven't
| finished the pages on pollen development and morphology.)

Thanks. That sounds interesting.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In reply to Janet Tweedy ) who wrote this in
, I, Marvo, say :

In article , Uncle Marvo
writes


Are they still in pots? Indoors? Maybe that's why they're not
flowering. They like growing where they've been sown too. But also,
I would have planted them much more earlier. HTH

Yes, but the pots are those degradable ones made of cardboardy
stuff, and they in turn are in the ground. They're outdoors, growing
up a wooden frame. I think you're right, planting them earlier
rather than forcing might be the solution. Ah well, next year!

Thanks


I have always transplanted mine without a failure yet. However they
are late to flower and mine have only just started to flower and they
are climbing up a south facing wall.
Give them another week or so. Aren't there any buds yet?

Ah, I might be too impatient. Yes, there are tiny buds. It's just that the
load of them I saw in Spain looked like they'd been going for some time. The
weather in that part (Northen Spain, basque country) is similar to that in
England but I presume that the frosts finish earlier. I'll wait ...

In reply to Pam Moore ) who wrote this in
, I, Marvo, say :

On Fri, 1 Sep 2006 11:22:25 +0100, "Uncle Marvo"
wrote:

Morning Glories.

I planted a few this year using a method I read about in the paper
in early June, which was to soak them in warm water for a few hours,
then plant two in each small pot with compost, then pick out the
weakling. The resultant plants have grown up poles to a height of
four feet or so but refuse to flower.

When I was in Spain last week there was a magnificent display of
them just rambling all over the top of a wall, not climbing or
anything. Hundreds of the superb blue flowers I was looking forward
to.

Any ideas on why they don't flower? I used two different packets of
seeds from two different suppliers, different varieties too, but no
flowers on either. I suspect I should put them in earlier without
soaking, but the article indicated that they should flower either
way.

The annual ipomoea do take a while to flower. I sense that they need
to be a certain height. I have some on a fence, some on canes in a
pot, some growing up my wisteria etc. None flower until they get to
about 6 feet but now they are flowering well. Give yours a chance if
they are the annual ones. I think they will flower very soon.
Sowing them too early in Spring is a risk, as if put outside too soon
they die of cold. On the other hand, I have some in flower which have
self-seeded from last year! Timing is important.
Once they do flower it is very easy to save seed. I have not bought
any seed for some years.
Have you fed them with tomato food?

[feeds them with Tomorite]

I have now.