u/DrowBot64

So if you haven't seen my last post I found a mature poinsettia tree with seeds near me and thought I'd give it a shot to grow some, being that there is almost zero information related to poinsettia seedlings on English. And well, I'm happy to announce the seedlings turn 1 week old today! So far they're doing very good, they're growing really fast, even far faster than I expected, and they've got some huge seedling leaves as well as some true leaves that are seemingly going to grow pretty big as well. The seedling leaves at the time of me posting this are around 4 centimeters wide on all sides, and I can definitely say I didn't expect them to have seedling leaves this large, but I'll have to let y'all know if they grow any larger than they are now.

All and all the seedlings are doing great, hopefully I can keep them for another year and get them to flower to see what might change with them, that's all for now, bye!

So if you haven't seen my last post I found a mature poinsettia tree with seeds near me and thought I'd give it a shot to grow some, being that there is almost zero information related to poinsettia seedlings on English. And well, I'm happy to announce the seedlings turn 1 week old today! So far they're doing very good, they're growing really fast, even far faster than I expected, and they've got some huge seedling leaves as well as some true leaves that are seemingly going to grow pretty big as well. The seedling leaves at the time of me posting this are around 4 centimeters wide on all sides, and I can definitely say I didn't expect them to have seedling leaves this large, but I'll have to let y'all know if they grow any larger than they are now.

All and all the seedlings are doing great, hopefully I can keep them for another year and get them to flower to see what might change with them, that's all for now, bye!

Yes that's right, SEEDS. Some of you might not know this but poinsettias don't always grow as those small little houseplants everyone keeps during christmas, in their native habitat in central Mexico (which just so happens to be where I live) they instead grow as fairly big trees, measuring around 2 stories tall and they're generally 50% wider than they are tall. And it's because of this that I presume many people have planted them around my city since they do well and are easy to get, leading to there being a good amount of these mature form poinsettias around here. And seemingly, the presence of various poinsettia trees around here has led to at least one of them growing seed pods with viable seeds on them, which I harvested after noticing the tree the seeds were coming from and decided to grow them myself.

Now, the problem with this is that there is damn near no information about growing poinsettia from seeds, with some websites even stating misleading information such as saying you have to cold stratify the seeds for multiple months (which by the way, how does that even work? Poinsettia naturally live in semi-arid warm mountains where not once does it ever snow, poinsettias themselves are not frost hardy in the slightest dammit!) so I had to go off intuition and guess how they grow in their native climate (but to be honest I didn't have to do much guessing since I already live in it though). As such, all I did was stick the seeds about 2cm underneath a pot with very organic soil and tried to water only when the top half of the soil seemed completely dry, after that the seeds germinated fairly quickly, taking only 1 and a half weeks for the seedlings to pop out of the soil and 2 weeks for the seedling leaves/cotyledons to split open from the seed shell and begin to grow. Also, the cotyledons seem to be covered in what I believe to be the seeds endosperms after they rise from the ground, this approximately 2mm thick crust eventually thins away and becomes easily peelable and removable from the cotyledons (see pictures 8-9) which allows the cotyledons to fully expand and grow along with the seedling.

I am particularly eager to share the last part related to the cotyledons, because even though there's a few articles on the internet talking about how to germinate the seeds there are none and I really do mean NONE that go in depth about the appearance of the seedlings and cotyledons or show pictures of them, or atleast none that I could easily find. So pretty much, you're looking at the only picture of poinsettia seedlings on the internet =b.

I find it really strange that such a well known and iconic plant as the poinsettia, being found on every corner of the globe and all, has such a poorly documented registry on its seeds and seedlings, most likely because you can only harvest seeds from the old and tall arborescent forms of the plant which is a luxury not everyone seems to have. But I'm here to make that change, at least a little bit. I will keep everyone updated with how the seedlings grow over the months, hopefully my post reaches people who are just as interested in growing these things from seeds as I am

Yes that's right, SEEDS. Some of you might not know this but poinsettias don't always grow as those small little houseplants everyone keeps during christmas, in their native habitat in central Mexico (which just so happens to be where I live) they instead grow as fairly big trees, measuring around 2 stories tall and they're generally 50% wider than they are tall. And it's because of this that I presume many people have planted them around my city since they do well and are easy to get, leading to there being a good amount of these mature form poinsettias around here. And seemingly, the presence of various poinsettia trees around here has led to at least one of them growing seed pods with viable seeds on them, which I harvested after noticing the tree the seeds were coming from and decided to grow them myself.

Now, the problem with this is that there is damn near no information about growing poinsettia from seeds, with some websites even stating misleading information such as saying you have to cold stratify the seeds for multiple months (which by the way, how does that even work? Poinsettia naturally live in semi-arid warm mountains where not once does it ever snow, poinsettias themselves are not frost hardy in the slightest dammit!) so I had to go off intuition and guess how they grow in their native climate (but to be honest I didn't have to do much guessing since I already live in it though). As such, all I did was stick the seeds about 2cm underneath a pot with very organic soil and tried to water only when the top half of the soil seemed completely dry, after that the seeds germinated fairly quickly, taking only 1 and a half weeks for the seedlings to pop out of the soil and 2 weeks for the seedling leaves/cotyledons to split open from the seed shell and begin to grow. Also, the cotyledons seem to be covered in what I believe to be the seeds endosperms after they rise from the ground, this approximately 2mm thick crust eventually thins away and becomes easily peelable and removable from the cotyledons (see pictures 8-9) which allows the cotyledons to fully expand and grow along with the seedling.

I am particularly eager to share the last part related to the cotyledons, because even though there's a few articles on the internet talking about how to germinate the seeds there are none and I really do mean NONE that go in depth about the appearance of the seedlings and cotyledons or show pictures of them, or atleast none that I could easily find. So pretty much, you're looking at the only pictures of poinsettia seedlings on the internet =b.

I find it really strange that such a well known and iconic plant as the poinsettia, being found on every corner of the globe and all, has such a poorly documented registry on its seeds and seedlings, most likely because you can only harvest seeds from the old and tall arborescent forms of the plant which is a luxury not everyone seems to have. But I'm here to make that change, at least a little bit. I will keep everyone updated with how the seedlings grow over the months, hopefully my post reaches people who are just as interested in growing these things from seeds as I am

I wonder if it'll be possible to hybridize them all...

Species (in order)

Euphorbia inermis

Euphorbia anopila

Euphorbia obesa hybrid (possibly with meloformis subsp. valida)

Sold to me as Lophophora williamsii, got this 2 year old plant for just over 11 USD when converting to dollars

Leuchtenbergia is a very curious looking species of cactus with its very pronounced tubercles, but something I've noticed about this species is that it possesses two kinds of "stem". The first kind are the long tubercles with spines at the end, and the second is a smooth trunk that is exposed after the tubercles shrivel up/are removed, and I do not understand how the cactus was able to grow both kinds of stem tissue instead of merging them both into one like other cactus genre such as Mammillaria, which also have very pronounced tubercles that are, unlike in Leuchtenbergia, very much the stem itself and do not fall off/cannot be removed without exposing the inner tissue of the stem.

So does anyone know what is going on in here? How does this cactus have 2 kinds of stem tissue? In any other plant I'd just assume that the "tubercles" are in reality extensively modified leaf petioles and the smooth, bare stem that is exposed after they fall off is the true stem tissue but I know cacti don't work like that, and in cactus that do grow leaves such as Austrocylindropuntia the morphology of the leaves is completely different, so I am having a hard time believing that is the case in Leuchtenbergia, does anyone know more than me about the morphology of this thing?