Germination & Bulbs, Stenomesson from seed

norton cuba melly nortonc26@hotmail.com
Sat, 11 Feb 2017 19:50:06 PST
Hello everyone, my name is Norton. I´m a student of Environmental Engineering in Lima - Peru, new to Pacific Bulbs Society. I'm currently germinating native plants from an ecosystem called "lomas". Most of those species are likely to disappear from anthorpogenic activities, growing population, the lack of political will to preserve them  and lack of knowledge of the people that live in big cities.  I´ll be posting a mail by species, to not overwhelm you with information, I will be very thankful for any information I can get from you. I will be also posting pictures on PBS wiki.

Additional lnformation: About the ecosystem "lomas" : It goes along the coast of Peru to the north of Chile., located in the desert, so it´s dry in the summer, almost no vegetation, maybe cactus and trees, and in the winter it goes up to 80- 100% of humidity in the air from the fog we get from Humboldt´s current and the South Pacific High, the ground is cover by all types of herbs & shrubs, and the sky is very cloudy almost every day, so plants get about 5 months of water from June to October. The ecosystem only goes from 100 to 1000 m.a.s.l.


I want to ask about the genus Stenomesson , so I´ve germinated 2 species , Stenomesson flavum and the other one I have yet to identify, with 100% germination rate, the seeds are black & flat, like in Zephyranthes or Hippeastrum. They flower in the summer when dry and the leaves come out in winter when the ground is wet. To germinate, I float them for 24h and then sow in a 4 inch pot with premix, that I cover with transparent plastic to keep humidity, normally they start growing the root after 3 days. They only grow one long leave, that gets wider when older. The light they get is from a window sill, so I complement with CFL light bulbs, a mix of warm and cool bulbs, since in Peru there are no light bulbs for plant growth
I had 2 issues:
Roots are long so they go against the bottom of the pot and i have kept them wet for 5 months and the bulbs have only grown the size of a pinky nail. . Is there any advice I can get to grow them better? Deeper pots, organic fertilizers ??


Ps: This work is mainly to guarantee the conservation of native species. Im not interested in exchanging seeds or bulbs. What I will exchange is knowledge and pictures.


Best regards

Norton



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