Chamaedorea flowers

[Walter John]

How is this for colour in the garden, topped off with Chamaedorea plumosa inflorescences.

Well I liked it , thought I'd share. Let's see more Chammy only inflorescences for a change.

[Gileno Machado]

That's beautiful Wal...I also love to see Cham flowers but I still can't figure out whether they're male or female...Anybody else has pictures of Chamaedoreas in bloom? Where's Jay from Perth when we need him?

[Gileno Machado]

Ernesti-augusti that is...male or female?

[palmtreesforpleasure]

Jason is busy building his house and new job, spoke to him yesterday, has a bit on his plate at the moment

he is fine

regards

colin

[PalmGuyWC]

Gileno,

Sorry, as it's a little late now, but your picture is of a male inflorescence at anthesis. Had you cut the entire inflorescence off into an envelope and let it dry, you could have collected quite a bit of pollen. I always put the open envelope under the flowers before cutting it off, as just jaring the inflorescence causes quite a bit of pollen to drop. At anthesis the flowers change color to a brilliant orange and give off a nice sweet scent.

The female inflorescence of Ernesti-Augusti is usually a single spike that grows vertical above the foliage. Sometimes the spike will have more than two divisions.  For best results to pollinate them, the individual petals of the females have to be stripped to expose the pistal for pollination. I wrote an article about the process for Principes many years ago.

Dick

[aussiearoids]

Bad light here , but this large clump is thriving beside the Bruce Hwy , just past the information center in Tully .

[aussiearoids]

And here is the flower . Think this is either costaricana or microspadix . ??? . Its growing in full sun and is approx 3m tall and 1m dia. clump.

[Gileno Machado]

(PalmGuyWC @ Oct. 07 2007,07:04)

QUOTE

Gileno,

Sorry, as it's a little late now, but your picture is of a male inflorescence at anthesis. Had you cut the entire inflorescence off into an envelope and let it dry, you could have collected quite a bit of pollen. I always put the open envelope under the flowers before cutting it off, as just jaring the inflorescence causes quite a bit of pollen to drop. At anthesis the flowers change color to a brilliant orange and give off a nice sweet scent.

The female inflorescence of Ernesti-Augusti is usually a single spike that grows vertical above the foliage. Sometimes the spike will have more than two divisions.  For best results to pollinate them, the individual petals of the females have to be stripped to expose the pistal for pollination. I wrote an article about the process for Principes many years ago.

Dick

Thanks for the information Dick. That plant photographed actually belongs to a friend...Tho only flowering Chamaedoreas I have at the moment are my C. elegans and C. brachypodas and I believe they are all male plants. Does the pollen remain viable for long periods of time, in the fridge? Is it possible to hybridize Chamaedoreas like in other genera? Thanks again.

[PalmGuyWC]

Gileno,

If kept dry, Chamaedorea pollen will remain viable for several weeks at room temprature, but I did store mine in the refrig., just to be on the safe side. Patrick Schafer freezes his cocoid pollens, but I never tried that with Cham. pollen.

A number of Chamaedoreas will cross, but most of them won't. I did numerous crosses some years back. There are some articles about it in some of the back issues of Principes, and some mention of it in Don Hodel's Chamaedorea book. I think I wrote something about it in one of the older threads on this forum.

Dick

[Tad]

I had to compress it to put it up on this site but the infloresceneces are just starting to emerge and appear as grey hair!

[Tad]

another one

[Tad]

and these with the tell tale orange color

[PalmGuyWC]

Tad,

The first picture you posted is a male Ernesti-Augusti several weeks away from reaching anthesis. The second picture shows two female Ernesti-Augusti, also not reaching anthesis yet.  I used to strip the petals away from the female flowers with a sharp dental tool. If you hit them just at the right time the petals are turgid and snap away to expose the pistal. Then they can be brushed with pollen. I used to get almost 100% seed set using that method. Just shaking a bag of pollen over the female flowers didn't work to well. You have to watch the female flowers closely as they are only receptive for a couple of days.

The same method works for C. metallica and Stolonifera also, and you can cross C. Ernesti-Augusti with C. stolonifera.  I was never able to cross C. metallica with anything.

Dick

[Tad]

cool, those pics were from  mexico from back last december, but I will print your post off and pass it on to the powers that be at the camp.