At last weekends WOS meeting a member brought bundles of old AOS Bulletins to give away. Having heard how great it used to be I grabbed a year's worth. Last night while thumbing through them I came across an interesting article (well, several actually!)

This article described a method of transfering orchid seed to a flask/jar through a rubber membrane cemented into a hole in the lid using a syringe. The technique obviated the need for a hood or glove box. The author was doing Phals, of course. I was recently reading about sowing over a steam column and thinking it could be my entree into the whole flasking game without a lot of specialized equipment but this sounds even better. Maybe even too good to be true?

Is anyone else familiar with the article/technique? Since this was written around thirty years ago I would think by now it either would have been proven less-than-ideal or an awesome way to go.

Sounds interesting. I hope someone has further info. How old was the article? Could you possibly contact the author?

I don't have it in front of me but I believe it was from the 70s. Responses on another forum point to the pitfalls of replating with this method. I'm not familiar enough with flasking procedures to know exactly in what situations this might not be necessary but I've received lots of helpful advice. For the time being I think I'm just better off sending my capsules to labs rather than trying to construct my own no matter how small.

I agree with using professionals to do my flasking. The only problem I have with it at the moment is shipping the flasks. I would give anything to have a good flasker within a days drive.

Hi, I have toyed with the syringe method, there are a number of folks on the internet who seem to use it. The problem that I quickly ran into was that seed stops up the orifice of the needle almost immediately unless it is extremely dilute. If one has very little seed in a large volume of liquid it works fine. Seed blocking the orifice of any device can be a problem, I use extra-large orifice pipets in the laminar flow hood to avoid the problem. If you want to experiment, find very large 14 gauge needles (your local veterinarian might be sympathetic). I used vacutainer stoppers as the septum since they are made to take these very large needles and not leak - again, the veterinarian is your best bet. You only need a few, they are easily reusable once you harvest the flask.

Everyone should try to flask - it is extremely rewarding! On the other hand, if you have pro's that you can count on, you can spend your time with the seedlings instead.

Ron Burch