Roots and standing upright.

ALRIGHT, so we have some action going on. The little Flame of the Forest is starting to finally look like a proper plant.

For days and days the little seedling didn't seem to be doing anything at all. I was worried that it was too wet, or didn't have enough dirt, or was too cold. But finally about a week ago I noticed ROOTS (!) growing from part of the shoot. Check it, if you look closely you can see the roots emerging from what I guess is now the tap root:

And during at the same time leaves began to develop in between the cotyledons (correct word, I think?):

So yesterday, February 24 2010, The plant freed itself from the cold dark earth and said hello to the upper atmosphere of the greenhouse box. It was a miracle!

The cotyledons look like they partially rotted while stuck in the seed starting substrate. It makes me nervous for the rest of the 70 or see seeds. But regardless, this little Flame of the Forest is starting to look pretty good! What do you think?

Slow growin'.

Not a whole lot has happened. It still looks the same, but is sticking further out of the dirt. I wonder if there was enough dirt on top of it? I think I'll just leave it alone for a while longer and see what happens. Sorry folks, hopefully it won't die on us!

The suspense is killing me.

A day later.

Delonix regia - Flame of the Forest

So here we are again, on Super Bowl Sunday, talking about plants. Here is a picture of the first seed to sprout, one of the Flame of the Forests (AKA Royal Poinciana)

Not very impressive, I know, but I am excited! Here is a picture that I found on the Interweb of what the plant looks like when it is all grown up:

And the flowers!:

It seems that the tree is endemic to the Madagascar dry deciduous forests, where it is endangered. Wiki says that the tree is widely cultivated throughout the world, and in South Florida the tree usually flowers in June. It is often grown as a shade tree because of it's modest average height of five meters and wide spread.

First day of the blog!

It is Super Bowl Sunday here in New Orleans, and my first plant has sprouted! But before we get to that, I should probably say what this whole thing is about. So here goes-

For Christmas my dad got me a banana seed kit. It came with some ten species of bananas, as well as a couple species of tropical trees. On January 24th I finally got around to buying some seed starting trays and to sowin' the seeds. Here is a picture of the setup:

As you can see, there is a crap load of seeds. The pieces of paper are my "seed maps". Without them, I would have absolutely no idea which species of banana are planted in any given square.

That's that. The seed kit said that each species takes between 4 and 36 weeks to germinate. Now, I know what you are asking: "There are ten types of bananas?!? What kinds do you have?!?" Here is a list:

Royal Purple Banana

Blood Banana

Kluay Pa Banana

Royal Sweet Banana

Dwarf Cavendish Banana

Flowering Rose Banana

Scarlet Banana

Striped Banana

Ethiopian Banana

Velvet Banana

I also have sown seeds of Flame of the Forest and the Giant White Bird of Paradise.

OK, that is enough for this post. Back later with pictures of the germinating Flame of the Forest and some banana facts!