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karen__w

Danae racemosa

karen__w z7 NC
16 years ago

Has anybody grown this from seed? I've got a nice crop of fruit on mine this year and am toying with the idea of trying to germinate some. In one of his books Dirr refers to them as 'tricky', but unfortunately he didn't elaborate.

Comments (5)

  • Lynda Waldrep
    16 years ago

    Mine also had more fruit this year than ever before. A friend who has a nursery does grow them from seed, and I "donated" all of mine to her. She said they are extremely slow and have only about a 25% germination. I was lamenting that my healthy plant had not made "babies," when she pointed to the ground underneath the plant and showed me all that were growing there. I then found a few more seedlings further out, and I plan to pot them up for a plant sale. But, boy, are they small! Whoever buys them will have to wait a long time. Guess that is why they are relatively expensive. Same with Rohdea japonica. Both are good but non-native plants for the shade, and they both came through the drought last year with flying colors...or should I say, waving green??!

  • trianglejohn
    16 years ago

    Back when I worked at PDN I believe they grew both Danae and Ruscus from seed. One or both of them took like 7 years to get to market size in a 4 inch pot. Be patient. I don't remember any fancy tricks but I imagine they removed the seeds from the pulp, washed them, sowed them and covered them lightly, then set them in the far corner of the greenhouse out of the way.

  • tamelask
    16 years ago

    i grabbed some seeds and tossed them in the ground and forgot about them. couple years later i thought i had some sort of wildflower- they look a bit like mayflowers at first, then the second year as they form that first long spike/branch you can tell. the 3rd year they get going ok. they are now 4 to 5 years old (1 came up a year after the other 2) and each have 3-5 12-18"branches, and though they are certainly smaller than a full sized one, they look nice. i don't remember how many seed i threw out- but it was only 5 or 6 at most, and i got 3 plants, so in nature at least the germ isn't awful. it did take a terribly long time, though. i need to move one of the first 2, as they came up right next to each other.

    i know under the right conditions they can be a slow pest. at the reid garden, which is mostly native wild flowers, they have it planted and it's reseeded everywhere down in the floodplain area. when we visited several years ago, they were talking about trying to get some or a lot of it out because it had reseeded too well and wasn't native.

  • karen__w z7 NC
    Original Author
    16 years ago

    I think I'll go ahead and plant some seed then. They'll be right on schedule to be gorgeous, mature plants for my retirement garden, and what's a few more pots to trip over in front of the garage?

  • tamelask
    16 years ago

    LOL!

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