lithops pods have opened..
lithops pods have opened..
now what ? whats method for collecting the seeds ? should they be planted right away or wait till fall..good thing i didnt cut the old flower stems,,i didnt even know about the pods....
like the farmer said to the tater,,i,ll plant ya now and i,ll dig ya later..
Hi Clemons- we used to harvest a lot of mesemb seeds at the nursery I worked at. The prcedure actually involved forcing openthe capsules by wetting them, placing them still wet on pieces of paper, and then shaking the tiny seeds out when the capsules finally dried. Ian or others may know of other methods.
peterb
peterb
Yay! It is the right time of year 
Do you know who the pollinator might be? Lithops will cross with eachother (mostly only with another species with same flower colour) although usually that needs help from a person. Lithops bought from a nursery over winter very often have been pollinated because they were grown with lots of friends.
Get them out any way you can. I like to extract the seeds without wetting the capsules. When they are wet the seed will not come out easily and then it all sticks together until it is dried. But opening a dry capsule is fiddly and you tend to get bits of chaff in with the seed. Peter, how do you stop the capsules closing up again when they dry? Anything that achieves that would seem to be ideal.
You can sow the seed whenever you want, but seed that has only just ripened can be slow to germinate and often germinates in several waves a week or two apart. I find that Lithops sown at this time of year are hard to give enough water and often don't produce their true leaves early enough to produce another set in spring. If you grow them in a propagator under lights, that obviously would be less of an issue.
Do you know who the pollinator might be? Lithops will cross with eachother (mostly only with another species with same flower colour) although usually that needs help from a person. Lithops bought from a nursery over winter very often have been pollinated because they were grown with lots of friends.Get them out any way you can. I like to extract the seeds without wetting the capsules. When they are wet the seed will not come out easily and then it all sticks together until it is dried. But opening a dry capsule is fiddly and you tend to get bits of chaff in with the seed. Peter, how do you stop the capsules closing up again when they dry? Anything that achieves that would seem to be ideal.
You can sow the seed whenever you want, but seed that has only just ripened can be slow to germinate and often germinates in several waves a week or two apart. I find that Lithops sown at this time of year are hard to give enough water and often don't produce their true leaves early enough to produce another set in spring. If you grow them in a propagator under lights, that obviously would be less of an issue.
--ian
I cut off the capsules, carefully! I cut off old flowers that don't have capsules too. The tricky ones are those that get stuck between heads that split in two. Leave them alone until they are ripe, which is when they open up to a spray of water, normally about this time of year. You can leave them longer if you like. I have needle-nosed tweezers, essential equipment for cleaning up mesembs and messing with those capsules
--ian