My Medinilla lives in the garden all year and is in flower now. It sets seed every year. The seeds are a purple color about 3/16 inch dia. When they are ripe they shrivel and fall to the ground. I have never tried to germinate these seeds so I have no idea how viable they are. The seed bunch looks like a small bunch of grapes.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

John Driscoll

I think the seeds are actually tiny and inside the fruits that John described. I take the berries when they start to turn dark and give them a squeeze onto some sterile potting mix, spritz it with some water and keep covered til they germinate.

Hi
Which species?? I regularly get fertile seed from myriantha but nothing from magnifica. Have not really tried to grow the seedlings on as most die from "damping off" I'm sure a simple fungicide would help with that.
I figured a long time between seed and mature plant??
So I use the space for other things?? Good luck with them certainly worth a shot!! gary

Thanks for the info. It sounds similar to starting fuchsia berries. The one that bloomed is a Medinilla cumingii. Magnifica isn't happy here. The cumingii is hardier and is growing well.

I have no doubt that it will take a long time to mature from seed. I just can't resist planting the seeds and am a glutton for punishment.lol I have several slow growing plants that I've started from seed. Right now I have a couple trays of lapageria just beginning to germinate.

Hi
My magnifica isn't happy either but it's not dead lol.
I have the same habit with seeds of oddball plants. The worst have been understory palms . Started in 01 took a year to germinate and now have four fronds over two feet high!!. On palms that mature at 30 feet.I've heard the maturation period is 30 years !!!
On the other hand two trees one pushing 30 feet with equal spread described as "small slow growing tree"" other rare collectors tree" has grown more in the last year than the previous 10. First snaps in winds as low as 30 and the other is a bug magnet lol Not one flower so far.
Lapageria would be fantastic but not in florida heat
One that has me pulling my hair is tropical rhodies !!
Easy to germinate but "damp off"
Seeds are fun to work with but not for the imapatient lol good luck gary

I'm on my second magnifica and if this one doesn't make it I won't try another. The tropical rhodies are gorgeous. I've never tried one. I'm not much for palms though I do like robellinis. Funny how some plants don't always follow "the rules" we read about them. The summer heat here is a problem for me with my cloud forest plants and I have to keep them in a cool greenhouse during July and August. We get the 100% humidity and high heat, very similar to So. FL. I've been in So. FL during Aug and it was hotter in DC.

Hi
You can get free seeds from the Hawaii Veraya society.
Specially selected for your grow method. They have no selections for "black thumbs"
though lol They have a couple at the AOS GH Gorgeous!!
I can't really have a working GH due to the constant warmth so I just stick with "Lowland" species.
I think the climate killer in this area is night time lows often remaining in the 80 at night with daily rains.
Have wonderful crops of fungus whiteflies ,botrytis etc ,etc. The winter can go years without frost or several in one year.
Palms are overused as "landscape" plants but eventually you run into species that can't be used as LS plants due to sensitivty,slow growing,have gigantic thorns ,or in the case of the "understory" they grow in dense shade and yet get 20/30 feet tall.lol. People send me pix of several growing in habitat looking "magnifica" lol captions like "Easy easy to grow but can become "WEEDY".
How cruel is that?? lol Good luck with your seeds!!!
gary

Gary & Karyn, I had trouble growing magnifica too. Killed a couple. Then I put it in a LARGE terra cotta pot. The dang pot is so big & heavy, I have to use a dolly to move it. Anyway, I did a mix of orchid mix (for phals) and well drained soil; kept in the shade house under orchid conditions & fertilized. That plant took off in growth. It bloomed for months over the summer. So far so good. Hope this helps.

Trini
By "magnifica" referring to the Medinilla or to the palm J. magnifica?? I'm growing the M. magnifica very similar but with a bit of coir and coconut chips. It grows and flowers just not magnifica lol M. myriantha seems to be MUCH easier. Karen is growing M.cumingii. Have no experience with that one.
Come spring I'm going to move the M. magnifica up into a tree with .tree fern as a media to grow epiphyticly. I saw pix in habitat and that's the way it was growing. Worth a shot anyway.
If referring to the palm that's a REAL hair puller lol.
What I see as struggling growth may just be its natural habit . Only one I've seen in person is at Fairchild and it was groowing in the rare plant house .
Thanks for the info .M. magnifica really lives up to it's name but so far not for me lol gary

Gary, I am referring to the Med magnifica. I also threw some coconut husk into the mix.
Let me know how it does epiphytically for you. I've also read that that's how it grows.
I've have killed every species of Medinilla so far. :( Oddly, they all died after blooming. So I am keeping my fingers crossed on this mix. I also have miniata in the same mix and it is doing fine.

I have medinilla magnifica (I think, least that was what was on the tag). The place I got it is notorious for mislabled plants though so it may be Medinilla cumingii. I've had it for two years. I tried some berries/seeds last winter. I squeezed them on top of the growing medium and placed them under lights with high humidity. A few sprouted out of hundreds and then promptly died off..maybe fungal or maybe something else?

Anyhow for care: It gets late morning sun and slanted/dappled afternoon sun. It is in a large pot. It is happily potted in a mix of potting soil, perlite, and large orchid mix and a little bone meal and milorganite mixed in. It get great drainage because my dd dropped the pot last winter and there is a crack up the side LOL! It doesnt seem to mind at all and blooms about 10 mos out of the year. I read they are large epiphytic shrubs in thier natural habits. I water mine almost everyday during spring,summer,fall. I only water it about once a week or less in the winter if it isnt blooming. I feed it whatever the other plants are getting (usually MG) about once a month during the growing season.

Photo of it last year before repotting to much larger pot (need to take new ones)
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Closer of the flowers:
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Medinilla scortechinii (I think)Just got this one in gallon size for 12 dollars at a local nursery :)
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Found a more recent photo of the Medinilla Magnifica (?) with berries maturing (leaves are not yellow it is just the lightning in the photo)
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The Medinilla also blend well with other tropicals.

Are the purple berries ripe? I definitely think mine needs repotting in the spring.

They are ripe when they are dark purple and start getting pruny looking.

It's too bad the magnifica doesn't like it in my greenhouse. It's really pretty. Hope you don't mind my looking thru your pics. I just love your ay ay banana. Does the fruit remain variegated when mature?

That should read Ae Ae.

Karyn, no problem at all. Yes the fruit is variegated when mature. One of my faves.
Magnifica can be difficult. I imagine it will want tons of humidity. I don't see them too many places because I guess everyone has some measure of difficulty with them. Shame, because it is supposed to be a 'weed' in its native land. Go figure. :)

trini, I see what you mean the bracts are much larger on the magnifica. Do the magnifica berries get really bright pink? The ones on mine get really hot pink then turn dark purple. It is so easy to care for, I was suspect when everyone said it was hard to grow. I am not suprised that is was mislabled considering where I got it lol. Have you been able to root yours? I have the worst time rooting mine. Usually rooting stuff is easy but this one is a bear.

Is that a cacao plant on your flicker album?
I have about 25 baby cacao from early last spring that I am in process of potting up. They are the orange fruited type. I am going to get the red fruit next so I can plant the seeds to get a variety.

Sultry,
I think the seeds did start pink and went to purple. They were larger than yours though. And rooting is very difficult. I tried rooting the one you have and failed miserably. Can't try the magnifica as it is not large enough to take cuttings.
It did bloom for several weeks before the flowers fell off. I have seen vendors at plants shows selling the myriantha as magnifica, knowing that it wasn't but asking an expensive price. Which is not right.
The tree in my album is a brownea tree which I think I killed. It dried out and lost all the leaves so I don't know. Ugh!
Can you email me your source for the cocoa pods? If you dont' mind. Have had no success finding a source.

Trini I sent you an email thru GW about the cacao pods.

I got them at Montoso gardens. They can ship seeds/fruits here. They are fairly reasonable. Email them for availability before you order. They have always returned my emails fairly quickly and seem very nice.

Sorry to hear about your brownea tree. I hope it is just pouting and will recover. They sure are interesting, I looked them up :)

I went to the place I bought the coral medinilla today and got two more. The price was too irresistable lol. I also got the strangest succulent looking thing ..prob not a succulent but with a base like an adenium but with big leaves similar to a castor bean and with orange flowers similar to the coral medinillas. Its supposed to be Christmas but all I wanna buy are plants lol.

Here is a link that might be useful: Montoso Gardens

Thanks Sultry & Karyn!

Sultry, be sure to post a picture of your succulent thingy. It sounds similar to a Jatropha.
And I know what you mean about wanting plants for Christmas. That's what I want too. :)

I just purchased 10 Medinilla Magnifica seeds and before I go ahead I like to ask. How to germinate these seeds? They are extra tiny lol.
Thank you.

Maria I didn't have any luck with my medinilla seeds. I don't know if it was the seeds or me. I just squirted them onto a moist potting mix, covered the seeds with a fine layer of soil then enclosed the tray in a baggie. I also used bottom heat. Those were M. cumingii seeds. I do have one berry that appears to be developing on my M. magnifica. If it ripens I'll try the same method. Interestingly my cumingii produced loads of berries but my magnifica which was full of blooms all summer just dropped the spent flowers. I was surprised to see a single berry in the greenhouse yesterday.

i bought m. cumingii a few months ago and also decided to roll over the dice and pick up the seeds they are arrived with. i squeezed the seed casing just as everyone did in the surface of the sterilized medium i used and sprayed deionized water each watering schedule. but because i became too busy with school, i forgot to maintain the moisture in their environmeent and forfeited the idea of propagating them.
i also got a m. speciosa and decided to propagate it by stem cuttings and failed miserably, then settled to repot it and washed off the soil from its root system.(it's too bad that after that it promptly died because i disturbed its roots.)
but that never ended there and i blood-mindlessly jerked another one, which is a m. myriantha. this time, i decided to use the cheapest, most reliable, and most water retentive medium, which is coco dust, and cautiously and quickly did i took it off its previous pot.
now resting under the shade of my humble queen sago cycad, that small, compact, barely 1 foot tall m. myriantha has more than 15 racemes and still pushing growth.(if not for the cursed mealy bugs, it would have more.) and the m. cumingii is growing uncontrollably. (i've heard tell it grows as a small tree in the wild.)

i consider the medinilla do best in larger pots despite their nature in the wild as i observe from the ones i have without disregarding the environment where they are in. (though, they are relatively new to me.)

This is my first medinilla magnifica I bought last month Nov. homestead gardens had them and I love exotic plants. So I had a big clay pot lying around, I'm using this along w/my light soil w/extra perlite and I mixed each layer with Cattleya orchid mix (big chunky bark/big perlite pieces). The top portion I filled it all w/orchid mix. So not much really soil - I figured it looks like a big orchid to me so it'll need breathing room. It's winter here in Maryland east coast - now December so I have this in my winter grow room w/the rest of my Tropicals under artificial lights. When Spring comes at the end of April all these plants will go out on the balcony (south facing). Hope this is okay to do? Looking inside the leaves I see these dark prickly kind of looking areas. I think this is where the flowers come out?

I haven't posted here in forever. I still grow M. magnifica and don't bother trying to germinate seeds any longer as I never had any luck. Half the time I don't even bother wintering the medinilla over. My husband has them in stock periodically so I just grab a new one but I did find a way to keep them growing beautifully over the winter. Almost complete neglect. No more greenhouse or grow lights. It's inside in low natural light and allowed to go bone dry between waterings. It's loaded with new growth. I'm also in MD, just NE of DC in Brookeville.

what a good example of why you should use proper names instead of common names. I never realized that my "coral plant" M. scortechinii was closely related to my "rose grape" M. magnifica

hi. not sure if anyone will read this since its an old post but i wonder if someone might sell me a cutting of medinilla magnifica and mail it...thank you

Aperson Inscarborough,

I recently purchased some (200) M. Magnifica seeds and will be planting them soon. If they successfully grow for me I don’t mind selling you a live plant. I’m not sure how much to sell it for and of course shipping cost will be whatever they charge me at UPS. If you’re interested please like this comment and reply. You can reach me by email at ravenbeaudine@gmail.com to discuss this further. My name is Raven, by the way. It didn’t give me an option to put a name on my post to you.