What promotes blooming?

Allen Repashy allenr@boardfishing.com
Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:00:21 PDT
Hello Everyone,

I have been lurking and learning for a bit on the list, but thought I 
might finally jump in on this one and stir the pot a bit. I am new to 
bulbs and plants for that matter, but have spent 25 years studying 
reptiles and amphibians, and some of the things I learned during years 
of breeding frogs might have a connection...... maybe not...... I am for 
sure a newbie here, so this might have been the topic of discussion many 
times before.

I worked with many frog species, but my passion was, and still is, the 
Family  Phyllomedusinae, a group of Tree Frogs.  Phyllomedusa sauvagei, 
is an interesting species from the Chacoan region of Paraguay that lives 
in a very arid climate. It has developed a waxy coating to prevent 
dehydration to survive in these dry climates. Anyways... back to frog 
breeding. Frogs need water to breed. Species like this must be ready for 
the smallest storm so that they can lay their eggs in a puddle of water 
and have the tadpoles develop before the water evaporates. They need to 
be ready...

For years, We thought that it was simple.... the rains triggered the 
frogs to breed..... So we started building "Rain Chambers" to stimulate 
rain and trigger breeding..... Keep the frogs hot and dry..... then 
"rain" on them and they will breed...... Only thing is that it didn't 
work very often at all... Until I noticed that when it did work, the 
local weather was rainy or near rainy....

 The frogs weren't waiting for the rain. They needed a few days at least 
to get the eggs ready to lay. They have eggs stored in their bodies 
during the dry season, but it takes a couple of days to prepare them to 
lay. So after a few years of this, it finally clicked..... What told 
them that rain was coming was barometric pressure.... Low pressure..... 
We were able to reproduce these conditions in a sealed room using a 
vacuum pump to create the pressure drop..... and it worked....

I discussed this with a friend who has a nursery that specializes in 
germinating seed and selling liners, and he thought it might cross over 
to seed germination in some way to those species that have poor germ 
rates for no reason, many of which are from arid lands..... Possibly 
blooming could be also be stimulated by barometric pressure...... just 
my two cents from a plant noob.....

Allen Repashy


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