X-Ray Cat's Claw Creeper Experiments
Cat's Claw is hard to germinate! I've been collecting and trying to get some to grow from seed to no avail. I exposed a large number of seeds to 5v into the mutagenesis chamber for about 5 minutes and spread them in the garden. Only one seedling looks like it could be cat's claw (12/3/19):
It seems to just stay that size though and it's been weeks.
The indoor, unexposed seeds haven't done anything (about 5 in potting soil under the fluorescent grow light) and it's been months. I've read they can take up to 6 months to germinate though.
I didn't realize there were so many different plants called "Cat's Claw", but I'm pretty sure I'm talking about Dolichandra ungius-cati.
02/08/20
It's still the same size, I wonder if it's a mutant or just waiting for spring? I haven't seen any others like it. I'm tempted to transplant it into a pot, maybe in May? We'll see. So many questions, what are you little guy?
03/04/20
I'm tempted to dig it out and bring it inside under a grow lamp and timelapse it to see what kind of motions it is exhibiting (if any) and maybe do some experiments with directing it to bend towards light? I took some pictures with a ruler so I could see how fast we're getting growth.
Feb. 9th:
I was too lazy to upload every pic, but it looks like leaves are just under 20mm long, 10mm at the widest, 25mm to the "V" of the highest pair of leaves. I haven't seen any others germinate, I tried soaking a few seeds in 250ppm GA3 (along with some superhot pepper seeds) and I haven't been able to get any of those to germinate either.
Nothing else to report!
05/09/20
The cat's claw began to grow new leaves a few days after I transplanted it into a pot and brought it inside under the LED grow light. Here's what it looks like now:
I haven't seen anything else germinate like this out in the garden, so far so good!
Tags: xray