Nepenthes madagascariensis seedlings

[estación seca]

I put some Nepenthes madagascariensis seed on some very wet long-fiber sphagnum moss in a plastic dish. There is always rain water on the bottom of the dish to keep the sphagnum wet.

I put it inside a plastic disposable cake cover, the kind with a black plastic bottom and a transparent dome cover that snaps onto the base securely. I put that where it gets an hour or so of morning sun through a window. The rest of the day it gets light from some CFLs a few shelves above. They began sprouting a few days ago, about a month after I sowed them.

There is one tiny, vertical green thread just off the tip of my finger, and another in the lower right corner of the photo.

[WhiteRabbit]

Very cool!

[Pattywack]

Wow, nice job ES! It will be interesting to watch these grow.

[naoki]

Sorry Estacion, I'm pretty sure it is not a Nepenthes seedling. Nepenthes is in Eudicots, and the ones you are looking at is likely to be a monocot. Did the seeds look like Nepenthes? Their seeds are unique looking, and I don't see them on your sphagnum moss. By any chance , did you got the seeds from ebay (possibly Chinese source)?

This is highly magnified, but this is how Nepenthes cotyledons look like:

This is Nepenthes eustachya.

[estación seca]

Our show is this weekend so I don't have a lot of time. Tonight or tomorrow I'll post a photo of the seeds. They are spindle-shaped, very narrow, and very pointed on both ends. They came from a vendor with a good reputation, from whom I've orderd befeore.

The sprouts are coming from places where I can't see the seed coat left behind. None of the visible seeds I sowed has a sprout. It is possible these are weeds that came with the moss. I don't know enough about moss life cycle to tell whether this might be some stage of moss growth.

[estación seca]

Now, dicots sprouting from the thready, spindle-shaped seeds.