It became apparent about two years ago that there are some natural ceropegia pollinators here in Staten Island. I began placing plants that bloomed at the same time near each other in hopes that they would cross, simply because they were in close (touching in some cases) proximity. I have tried to pollinate the flowers myself but the polonia and the place where they are supposed to go are so small that that I wound up damaging the flowers rather than crossing them. When seed pods form, I collect, lable as to seed parent, and plant seeds from individual pods separately. It has been very interesting to see the differences in the seedlings even from within the same pod.
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This is a picture of seedlings from one seed pod taken from C. debilis ssp. linearis showing a wide variety of leaf shape and coloring. There are also greater and lesser amounts of marbelling. As these plants have grown I have also noticed that some are climbers and others are trailers. |
I start all of my ceropegia seeds in a seed starting mix. I put the sterile soil-less mix into closable container. Small amounts of seeds, up to twenty, will go into a yogurt cup that seals with a clear plastic top (Dannon), larger numbers of seeds will be put into deli type containers. I punch holes into the bottoms of both types of containers with a hot ice pick before filling them with soil. The soil is doused with water and drained before I spread the seeds. The seeds are sprinkled on the surface of the wet soil and then a quarter inch (.5 cm) layer of traction grit (do NOT use sand) is sprinkled on top of the seeds. The container is sealed and put in a warm place under lights. Germination of fresh seeds takes from 5 to 9 days; although I have had a 'second wave' of germinations after about 3 weeks, in a pot where the first seeds germinated in 10 days (Hybrida hort.).
When the seedlings are about a half inch tall and begin to show the first true leaves I uncover the container and allow the plants to grow to about 5 to 7 inches depending on the species before transplanting. I would recommend that even in transplanting, that you simply lift the mass of seedlings out of the starting container and place it in a larger pot. I have lost too many seedlings, especially tuberous types, by planting them too low or too soon. For the tuberous types, I am waiting until they get their gray skin before before transplanting into individual cells or pots.