Hi All,
Here are some photos of some unusual flasks... and then some not quite so unusual flasks. Note the ruler in the photos and watch out for English-Metric Changes...

First off, here is a Cyp flavum, which loves to elongate its buds while still in flask. I was tired of this happening, so I just stuck two flasks with this problem in the sun. The seem to be doing very well, pretending it's spring with nice leafy growth. Don't know what will happen to the plants...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/Cypflavum.jpg

Next, a very happy Cyp acaule. So happy, it's lifted the medium at a 45 degree angle off the bottom of the jar with all its roots. The root tips are mostly in the liquid at the bottom of the jar.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/Cypacaule02.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/Cypacaule01.jpg

An unremarkable Cyp arietinum... Growing slowwwwllllyyy.... Anyone have suggestions to make them grow faster or should I just live with the fact that it's a dwarf? :)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/Cyparietinum.jpg

A very strange montanum... The roots are not as long as a usual plant, but they are twice as thick and the buds are much larger as well! Could it be 4n or something strange?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/PolyploidCypmontanum02.jpg

Cf. an ordinary Cyp montanum.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/Cypmontanum01.jpg

This is Cyp XSebastian = parviflorumXmontanum. Its old flask used to look a Lot like the ordinary Cyp montanum flask but with more roots, so when I replated, I couldn't get the agar off in a reasonable time, so I just took all the old medium with the plant as one chunk and stuck it in a new jar. Seems to like its new home and not mind the old medium. For a while, the old stuff was sort of floating around on top of the new stuff, but it eventually sunk in a bit and now you can barely tell.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/CypXSebastian02.jpg

I've started doing this to a lot of my old flasks that didn't get re-replated in normal time. Unfortuately, there is a high risk of infection since I move such a giant thing quite ungracefully into a tight new jar. Here're the contents of a Cyp XSebastian flask that went bad and had to be deflasked yesterday.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/CypXSebastian03.jpg

The longest roots in the photo measure 12cm! Mr Urban was lucky to have such a nice hybrid named after him :) Hopefully I'll have flowers in 5 years.

Last, a rogue Cyp acaule. He started turning green in the dark, so I put him in the window as an experiment. Unlike the flavum, all he did was elongate slightly and turn green. The flask *randomly* became infected one month after the most recent transfer. So, here it is, in the fridge. I'm hoping for normal growth from him, like the rest of them, come spring.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/Cypacaule03.jpg

We'll see. Hope you enjoyed the show :rolleyes:

Best,
Ross

Very interesting and great photos. :cool: Please keep us posted. Thanks for posting!

hello all,

unfortunately I have not yet seen the "wonderfull interresting" pics.
Why?

I only have a dial-up connection.
so I would have to sit in front of the comp, waiting about 5 minutes to download the pics. :mad:

Please look at the top threat and follow the recommendations how to post photos:

2) Re-size the picture to sensible proportions. Please try to keep photos on the smaller side, both for ease of viewing and quicker download time for those on dial-up connections.

It makes no sense to post those large pics, only the time of loading is longer.
I am very sorry to post this, but those large pics cause problems to me.

But I would be sooooooooooooo happy to see the pics too :woohoo:

greetings
Dieter

Hi Dieter,
Sorry. I thought those WERE small photos ;) They load in about 2 seconds on my computer, and I always forget how prohibitively slow dialup is! With pages like this, you can always open the page and go have a cup of tea, then come back :)

I resized them on Photobucket, but it sometimes takes a while to kick in.

Best,
Ross

Looking great Ross. It seems like you are learning a lot. That's a curious situation with the flavum. Have other growers had similar experiences? The acaule and montanum seedlings look great! Keep up the good work.

Your pics btw are not so large, but not so small either. Each of them runs around 60KB, which ain't that large, but taken together (9 pics) that's over 500KB. If you sized them and downgraded their quality in a software program (I use Photoshop), then you could render similar looking shots at a fraction of those KBs, say 15KB each, and not detect much of a difference. Still, I don't think your post was all that heavy, dial up or no...

Tom

Hi Dieter,
Sorry. I thought those WERE small photos ;) They load in about 2 seconds on my computer, and I always forget how prohibitively slow dialup is! With pages like this, you can always open the page and go have a cup of tea, then come back :)

I resized them on Photobucket, but it sometimes takes a while to kick in.

Best,
Ross

sorry Ross for my "remarks"
you are a young boy of 25, I am an "old sack" of 66
I mean, I dont have so much time any more :D .

but now, tks a lot, THOSE pics are now great for my "dinosaur computer" and dial-up modem :woohoo:

but to behonest, I also have seen your pics before you resized them ;-)


good luck with all your flasks.
waiting on report of good results

best wishes
Dieter

Nice little Cyp seedlings...:welldone:

Interesting, Ross!

As to flavum, I have done a total of 4 pods from 4 different plants. With each of them some seedlings elongated their shoots and the shoots turned green - perhaps half the seedlings did this. I put some in light then chilled them to get them to go dormant and I simply threw the rest in the refrigerator. In the spring, the ex-green seedlings had brown shriveled shoots whereas the "normal" seedlings looked, well, normal. I planted all of them out, and every single seedling grew as I would have expected. So the elongated green shoots did not seem to hurt nor did those seedlings look any larger this fall than their "normal" siblings. This fall, since they were outside in flats, all of them made nice "normal" buds for next spring. I dont know why some of the seedlings elongate like that in flask but I wont worry about them any more! I made a number of crosses with flavum this year. It will be interesting to see if any of the hybrid seedlings does the premature elongation thing.

I have had a number of acaule and reginae do the green shoot thing you saw. I just put them away in the refrigerator and they have always done well the following spring.

I am extraordinarily jealous about the arietinum as I do not have any of those growing - yet! They are dwarfs and will likely gorw slowly, BUT many folks get them to bloom second year out of flask so you will win in the end!

Best,

Ron Burch

Thanks All for the compliments and insights.

Dieter, glad the photos worked better for you.

Tom, aside from Ron and me, other growers do complain about flavum (and also formosanum) elongating early. Sounds like a personal problem, but it's quite common. Bill mentioned that as long as he didn't use kinetin or ammo nitrate in the mixes, the problem was significantly reduced. Passerinum is another one that elongates madly, at least for me.

Ron, I too planted some of the weird flavum outside and they grew normally; however, there were more deaths than usual from these plants.

I have only had problems with reginae elongating early when I put the protocorms in H2O2 to resterilize after a bacterial infection from replating badly. Actually, H2O2 makes many species do this, as I've found out (the hard way).

Re: arietinum, I don't think you'll have to worry about not having this species ;-) There are enough seed sources around still to make production possible. And Bill has been streamlining his proceedures over the past few years for this species. He'll soon have a beautiful protocol written up for anyone who wants to grow it. Then the trouble will just be to keep it's tiny rhizome alive sustainably! Maybe we just need an arietinumXplectrochilum hybrid for a more vigorous Rams Head.

As for Cyps in general, I think that a lot more seed from rare species will be available in the *near* future!

Best,
Ross

Ok, two more... These ones aren't necessarily weird. Then again, I think *any* Cyp flask is remarkable!

Cyp californicum. Note the roots going round and round :D
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/Cypcalifornicum03.jpg

Cyp acaule alba germinating :D ..... finally!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v249/nankeen/Cypacaulealbaprotocorms02.jpg

Best,
Ross

Very nice, pretty neat looking actually.:welldone: Good luck and keep us posted.

Those californicum roots are a scream! Now getting those to flowering size, that's the trick.

:great: :welldone: