Update 10 September 2010

Ansellia africana

My A. africana parent plant flowers

Prof. van Staden from the Research Centre for Plant Growth and Development at the University of KwaZulu Natal has kindly donated a few ex-vitro A. africana plantlets from his research. A friend of mine in Durban is organising to collect the plants and ship them down to me next week. These are completely yellow flowers, not the mottled kind and are from KwaZulu Natal. I am looking forward to receiving them.  My pod-parent plant recently flowered again so I took some more photos and photos of the progress of one of the pods. Both pods are doing very well.

As above (close up)

A. africana pod as of 10 Sept 10

Phalaenopsis Woolworths big pink pods

One of the three pods did not survive (P. Golden wonder X P. Woolworths big pink) but the other two (P. Golden wonder X P. Woolworths big pink and P. Woolworths big pink X self) are growing nicely and developing well.

P. Woolworths big pink pod as of 10 Sept 10

Stem props / clones

After initial contamination of some of the containers, most stems are doing well but growing very slowly! Its worse than watching paint dry! Some stems did not develop at all and have died which is to be expected from plants that may contain contaminants within the stems themselves. I have moved the P. amabilis stems into separate McCartneys into new media. The Oncidium stems have (all but one) produced flower spikes from their nodes... this is odd but not unique. I will sub-culture these further when they have matured. All (?) the internodal sections appear not to have done much at all. I will keep an eye on them anyway for a few more months but by now something should have happened so I think they may not make it. This is probably due to the concentrations of Benzylaminopurine and/or Naphthaleneacetic acid. I will re-look into this again later.