Opuntia Microdasys v.Albispina failure?

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Hi all,

If anyone is still following this thread, here's an updated picture of the little guy that I've been taking care of.

For a better idea of scale, the cactus is about 12-13mm from the base of the seed leaves to the top.

As tiny and fragile as it is, I took the decision to repot it this morning because I thought the soil it was in was quite dense, and was maybe not good for its growth.

I very carefully handled it by one of those seed leaves, held the roots under a dripping tap to clean it of the old soil. It's now in a small clay pot with a much less dense cactus potting mix and coconut coir. The root, incidentally, was about 30mm long.

Out of 20 seeds, this is the only one which grew. I have another 6 seeds which, as an experiment, I stratified for around 6 months in the fridge. They are now in a propagator so I'll see how I go with those.

Incidentally, the glochids have a red hue to them (which doesn't come across in the pictures too well), which is a pleasant surprise because I actually wanted 'Cinnamon Bunny Ears' seeds but couldn't find them anywhere!! The glochids on the eBay listing were definitely white.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234549341015

Hopefully the early repotting of this tiny plant won't stress it too much..

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[greenknight]

Opuntia seedlings are tough, no need to worry.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Opuntia seedlings are tough, no need to worry.

[jerrytheplater]

A friend just gave me three fruits of an O. humifusa from which I extracted the seeds.

Paul: were your seeds old when you sowed them? Tom in Tucson said to use one year old seed when sowing.

Latebloomer asked if anyone had chipped the seed before sowing. I'm thinking that might be a good idea seeing how hard the seed is. I'm kind of wondering if our Eastern Box Turtles eat that Opuntia fruit and scarify it as it passes through the digestive system. Just searched a Box Turtle site and they say the pads and fruit are good for them (it says to remove the spines first, but methinks if they are eating them in our woods they are eating them with the glochids just fine.)

Spence's video link comments had someone say to soak the seeds in Lemon juice before sowing. I'd say that is a kind of a scarification process simulating a digestive cycle.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Hi Jerry,

My apologies for the long delay in posting back.

I got the seeds from an eBay seller and I have no idea how old the seeds were when I received them. The original eBay listing is here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234549341015

My plants are not the same variety as the pictures in the listing. The glochids on my plants are a deep earthen red. Some pictures below...

Pic 1 & Pic 2 is the same seedling sown 16th August 2022 (pictures above). As you can see, it's grown into a quite healthy-looking specimen. It now stands 11cm tall with some kind of growth on top. Not sure if this is where a flower will appear or if it is a pad. The shape of the cactus has a slightly odd elongated diamond shape, which to my untrained eye, looks like the ones on this website:
https://www.rasnetwork.org/flowers/pric ... th-stages/

Pic 3 & 4 is a new seedling which started to grow towards the end of last year. I sown it 26th February 23 but it didn't show any signs of growth for many months.

We were heading towards the winter when it started to show signs of life, but I didn't water it during the winter, instead I kept it covered in a small propagator which which kept the soil from becoming bone dry.

Now we are heading out of Spring into the Summer in the UK, I've started to water it again. It had fallen over in the propagator and was at a 90-degree angle so I re-potted it into the small terracotta pot to stand it upright.

I did not 'chip' the seeds but I kept some in the fridge for quite a few months to see if this gave a higher success rate, but I frankly didn't notice any difference. I still had to wait months for my seedling to spring into life.

Out of the 20 seeds I got through the post, 4 are growing. If I had waited many months (or even years) longer, maybe the others would also have finally sprung into life. I intend buying more from this seller and I will give them much longer to germinate this time

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