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UK laws have not changed significantly for many years, so far as native wildlife is concerned, although several laws were re-written into one (The Wildlife and Countryside Act) 40 years ago. 
Laws affecting import and export have changed only for plants - the EU adopted the UK laws regarding animal import/export that had existed for many years here. Import/export laws/regulations with regards to plants have tightened enormously across mush of the world over the past 3-4 years.

You are correct about removal of plants in the UK without permission - this is theft, as I mentioned previously. It does not apply to seed. (Fungi are not plants, and although most people do not know, and those that do would be very unlikely to abuse the right, but anyone can collect fungi, literally anywhere, even from private gardens.)

^^^

Sad, very, very sad.
Loads of kids have no idea where milk or eggs (or cheese/butter) come from.
Although I note, yet again, the resort to an American name for something very everyday.

We Brits will all shortly be walking along the sidewalk in sneekers, being careful not to jaywalk, to go to the mall to buy scallions and rutabegas. Although we will probably have lost the use of our legs and have to drive the 100 yards in a 6 litre 4x4 by then.

Do you need a permit to collect anything in Spain?

In the UK, we are free to collect seed of anything. Only the very rarest of plants are protected from collection. We do sometimes have problems with people collecting where they have no permission, but that is theft.

The EU and UK import laws are essentially the same - the exporter will need to provide a phytosanitary certificate issued by the responsible authority in the exporting country.
You will need to inform your authority when the import is to take place - in the UK, the appropriate authority is DEFRA - Depertmant for Environment, Fisheries and Rural Affairs; you will probably know the equivalent in Spain.

The problem is probably timing when to transfer pollen - the video suggests every day for a week? 2 weeks?
If you pick a town near the centre of distibution of S. r., you can find online data for max. and min. temperatures, rainfall etc. for every day of the year.

Searching some more, a constant 25C is suggested as ideal for germination for S. r. - which would be close to what I used.

Acacia seed often germinates well if boiling (100C) water is poured over them and they are left to cool for ~12 hours.
Lots of Acacia species rely on their seeds being eaten by large herbivores, which cannot digest the seeds, so they are passed in the dung and then germinate. Some obviously rely on fire in one way or another - Callistemon seed is not released from the capsules until the capsule has been burnt, in some species.

Seeds that rely on ants usually have tiny pieces of "food" attached - usually high in fats, and that is what the ants move, not the seed (which happens to be attached to the food).

The orange tuft on S. r. seed...................logically it ought to be a visual signal, but the seed is huge. SANBI suggests that disperal is likely to be via rodents, but it is not known for sure.

Maybe you did not watch the YouTube video - all is explained. (Except germination)

(I did not remove the orange wool/fluff from the seeds when sown in the bag. From memory, the first seeds germinated within a very short time, maybe 1-2 weeks?)

Pollen that is transferred by birds is usually transferred on the head/face of the bird, frequently on the forehead.

When the SA Botanical Society still had a seed distribution, I hade 100 Strelitzia seeds and most germinated. I put them all in a plastic bag of damp peat/compost and hung it in the airing-cupboard, so probably reasonably constant temperature around 20C or a little warmer, and in the dark. The seeds are so large that removing them as they germinated was very easy.

I am unsure about self-compatibility - have a search of the SANBI website.

Also - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt8Wjys3gBc

Quote from: Carlos on January 23, 2024, 10:25:47 PMWhy stolen?

Because when pic's turn up on the www in more than one place, with no mention of owner etc., they are almost always stolen.

You did not mention a name or source when you posted originally.

Having no knowledge of the area at all, could it be a new species?

The images are from Facebook as "Clinanthus sp. "bicolor" - maybe stolen??

Thanks @MarcR - I will have a proper survey of what remains and give it a try if there are any potential martyrs.

I will buy seed again - it isn't expensive and the couple of batches from different sources have germinated well.

I am disappointed that so far the other two species have shown no sign of germination after the several days that X. r. has taken each time I have sown it.

Update for anyone finding this thread in the future.......

I transplanted the seedlings into pots with markedly alkaline and acid composts and they did far better (general appearance and survival rate) in acid. When removing them from the original pot, they very obviously had essentially no significant root system - the base of the stem ended in a tiny "blob" - they looked like tiny matches, with a leaf at the opposite end to the "head" (the root end).

A very few have made a third and forth leaf (first true leaves are indistinguishable from cotelydons, assuming what is seen as first leaves are cotyledons).

I have sprayed with seaweed extract and maybe that and the addition of  mycorhizal fungi/bacteria had marginal or no effect.

I strongly suspect that the seedlings/plant are incredibly slow-growing, which is "confusing" things. Maybe anyone interested in raising the plant from seed, needs to start as a very young person?

I have sown small numbers of seed of X. viscosa and X. hereroense in the past couple of weeks - update on those as and when they appear (so far no obvious germination, so far slower than retinervis).

The "usual" position is the opposite one - pollen but no stigma/ovary. A stressed or small plant, too small to be able to produce viable seeds, may produce pollen as it is a small drain on the resources of the plant.

Quote from: Uli on January 11, 2024, 01:16:36 AMOne thing I can say is that Carlina is an extremely tough plant forming a big and very deep tap root. So for sure it will not be happy in a pot

Some years ago, we visited a local plant nursery on their open day, when visitors could walk around the whole nursery.

Growing on their huge compost heap were dozens of flowering milk/St. Mary's thistle (Silybum marianum). I have always liked the plant but these were trully spectacular and they were covered in bees.

We got back to the nursery proper, to pay, and complimented them upon their spectacular display and were told that they agreed, and had tried growing it in pots, for sale, but with no root room, they grew to no real size and then flowered.

If anyone has the room, it is certainly well worth growing - here it normally reaches 1-1.5m, maybe a little more if happy. It is a solitary biennial, so should never outlive its welcome.

Sometimes restricted root room has beneficial effects though - out walking in local meadows we found a mullein around 45cm tall growing in minimal soil amongst rocks, in flower with the most intense, deepest pure yellow flowers imagineable. It looked a lot like Aaron's rod (Verbascum thapsus), which I also really like as a garden plant, but way too small and with amazing flowers, and it had a few ripe seeds, so I took the seeds home.
It is/was very standard Aaron's rod.

Unless your hygrometer is expensive, it is unlikely to be anywhere near accurate (by expensive, I mean $100+++++). Use a wet-bulb thermometer and tables - a "wet-bulb thermocouple" would be fine, although in confined spaces and/or with low ventilation rates, the evaporation from the wet bulb can add significantly to the RH.

(I was lucky when a factory where I worked, closed - I won a Vaisala electronic hygrometer.) https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/132943648081?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=710-153316-527457-8&mkcid=2&itemid=132943648081&targetid=4585513252137470&device=c&mktype=&googleloc=&poi=&campaignid=554609237&mkgroupid=1310618964595038&rlsatarget=pla-4585513252137470&abcId=9320693&merchantid=87779&msclkid=ab88d1482bdc1de20d6ab4d79814b6e6

You obviously know all about humidity calculations and how they work.....

RH during the UK winter in a greenhouse is going to vary quite a bit depending on weather as sunny weather will warm a greenhouse by quite a bit, which will obviously drop the RH. Outdoor RH in the UK is very, very rarely below something like 40-50%.

A far better and very accurate way to view humidity in the UK is to look at dew point. It is surprisingly accurate to assume that the maximum dew point during the day is around a degree or so above the minimum night-time temperature the previous night, minimum temperature is usually an hour or so before dawn. So, if the minimum night temperature is 5C, the maximum dew-point during the day is likely to be around 6C. If the maximum temperature during the day is 20C, that is an RH of 40%

%2Fexp [17.625 × T%2F (243.04 %2B T)]}.]Relative Humidity Calculator (omnicalculator.com)

In winter maybe the average minimum night temp. might be around 0C over a great deal of the country. In a greenhouse it might get to 10C during the day, maybe a little more if we get decent sunshine. That is an RH of around 53%. Come night time, most people would keep a minimum of something like 5C - that is an RH of 73%.

If your greenhouse has a soil floor, or leaks a bit, or it is crammed with leafy plants, RH will obviously often be higher, and how well sealed and insulated the greenhouse is has an effect (most UK greenhouses are not well sealed or insulated - stand inside one in a strong wind and that is obvious).

That said, minimum winter temperatures over lowland Britain are frequently/routinely a (very) few degrees above 0C - so far this winter - I live not far from Birmingham - I have seen only one real frost, although we are now in a period of night time temperatures hovering around 0C.

This is all pretty rough, but at the same time close to reality. (I worked in industrial  heating/ventilation/dew point/RH control for a while, plus my background is science through and through).

I should also say that for some psychological reason, many people (at least in the UK) see 50% RH and regard it as high humidity, mostly because people have no clue about atmospheric RH, presumably. It isn't high - put washing out to dry in 50% RH and it will dry PDQ.

IR is normally filtered out in critical applications, using (circulating) water.......................

What is the distance between plants and LEDs? What colour LEDs?

Science and commercial horticulture usually use moles/sq m/day as a measure of illuminance, rather than lux - something like 10-12 moles/sq. m/day is where commercial set-ups (and illicit operations) aim for.

One extra tip - I use wooden cocktail sticks (usually bamboo these days), or lengths of wooden kebab skewer in pots to judge how damp they are - just push them in close to the edge and when you want to know dampness, just remove and touch to your lips.
Cocktail stick work in pots to maybe 7cm, cut suitable lengths of kebab skewer for larger pots.
It works well for me - all pots of water-sensitive plants get the treatment.

Hmmmm

The usual density of LEDs used in horticulture for growth, without any natural light, is 600-700W/sq. m, so yes, that will get hot if you are anywhere near that (they may be far more efficient than incandescent lamps, but well over 99% of the energy is emitted as heat).

A lot of people think of S African plants, especially succulents and bulbs, as universally growing in very dry habitats. That isn't so, very many do grow in seasonally dry, or even very arid areas, but it is seasonal and many have copius amounts of water during their growing season - quite a few species, even some Lachenalia, for instance, naturally grow in shallow standing water -a handful of species even have the specific name "aquatica" as a consequence.

As a guess, plants such as cono's are "designed" to lose rather little water while in growth. Bulbs may have fleshy leaves, but they require quite a bit of water when in growth in pots and, unfortunately, it is perfectly possible to have moist air above very dry compost.

Maybe the "simplest" thing to try is to separate the air flow so that most (almost all) cools the LEDs without getting near the plants, and then try growing the bulbs without covering them?