Victoria cruziana flower opening

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CUBotanicGarden

CUBotanicGarden

Күн бұрын

Watch our Victoria cruziana in bloom
Victoria cruziana is one of two species of giant water lily in the genus Victoria, the other being Victoria amazonica. These giant waterlilies were first cultivated during the reign of Queen Victoria and are the largest of the water lily family Nymphaeaceae and native to South America.
Here at Cambridge University Botanic Garden (CUBG) we start off growing our Victoria waterlilies in February/March by nicking some seeds and placing them in a jam jar submerged in a tank of water at 28oC in the Tropical Reserve house. The seeds must be kept wet at all times.
When leaves appear we pot them into small pots of loam topped with gravel and place them back in the tank. They grow quickly at this point, requiring potting into the next sized pot every 2 weeks.
In May we choose the strongest seedling and pot it into the huge 1metre diameter pot in our Tropical Wetlands pond.
Once in this huge pot we feed each week with 3 feed balls (we make these ourselves using several slow-release fertilizers and clay-loam to bind it all together) and its growth accelerates again - each leaf reaching over 1metre in diameter. By July the first flower bud appears, usually get a fortnightly succession of solitary flower buds in July and August.
The first evening the bud opens with white petals, a beautiful pineapple scent and the female parts are receptive. At this point we get in the pond with a paint brush and pollinate it in that short window when the female parts are still receptive and the stamens are just starting to split (dehisce)and release the pollen.
The bud closes overnight and opens again the next day and this time the petals have turned pink and the male parts are ripe.
It closes one last time and sinks under the water. We put a net bag around the whole flower and label it with the date and accession number (unique identifier), before it sinks to the bottom of the pond.
Several months later we pull up the stalk bearing the flower (peduncle) and open up the net bag attached to the end to see how many seeds have been produced, usually several hundred per flower bud. By the end of the summer the plant has flowered itself out and we discard it.
We store the seeds in jars of water below 14 o C and wait till February/March to start the whole process over again.

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@hekaersa
@hekaersa 2 жыл бұрын
Does it have a scent?
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