Two of my female Sagos got pregnant from one of my male Sagos. They have both grown to massive proportions. Now I can start to see big fat seeds starting to push their way out of the womb type portion.
Is that how they come out? I thought this thing would open. I took these pics two days ago, and they are even more out today.
Now what? I really don't need hundreds of seeds. Does anyone know who might?
It'll still be a while before those ripen. I wouldn't expect more than about 30 to 40 seeds from 2 plants. You could try advertising them in the seed trade forum:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/trading/all/
I'll bet you I get a whole lot more than 30 to 40. The womb is HUGE.....over a foot across.
Evidently they put out infertile seeds too. Here is one that has the old infertile seeds below the new one which are probably infertile too in the new crown.
How do you know the difference in the seeds??
I didn't but PalmBob told me they were infertile.
Fertile seed is huge while infertile seed is small... at least with this species of Cycad.. other cycads makes seeds that are nearly identical to fertile ones... you then need to cut the seed open and look for signs of life inside (a small cotyledon-like structure). Sometimes cleaned infertile seed will float will fertile seed will sink (this does not work for all species, though.
Can you give a more definitive measurement of "huge" and "small" please. Inches?
And I understand the seeds are especially toxic. If we handle with gloves would we be OK? And can we just toss them in the garbage if no one wants them?
I've seen a lot of different Cycas seed and they're all pretty much the same in size when mature, about 20 to 25mm. Infertile ones can stop growth at any size, hence all small ones are pretty sure to be infertile. Sometimes the fuller sized ones are as well. I've tried that floatation test but it never gave consistent results. Germination is pretty fast so it doesn't take long to find out. The seeds are toxic, if you eat them. I've handled them, scraped the dried 'fruit' part off and then only washed my hands afterwards without ill effect. The seeds were eaten by the Indigenous Australians but only after long, elaborate processing. In the early days White people tried augmenting their flour supplies with it after finding out the natives ate it. They crushed it up and mixed it in with flour with fatal results.
Yikes.......I'll be sure not to munch on them :-))
Here's an article I wrote on Sago Palm care... half way down is a photo I took of fertile and infertile seeds in my hand to show the difference. But if that is not enough, do as I suggested above and cut the seeds in half and look for signs of life... if none, there are none.
And as mentioned above, the seeds are only toxic if eaten.
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/3342/
Oops, sorry about that
This message was edited Jul 17, 2012 2:08 AM
palmbob - did I miss something here.....? I cannot find article or photo????
