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Post by steev on May 12, 2011 12:50:59 GMT -5
In my pot of Tarahumara Popping sorghum there is an albino seedling. It will die as soon as it runs out of nutrients, as it can't photosynthesize. Anyone got any idea what I can feed it so it can survive, just as a curiosity? If I can get it to sprout blue eyes, i'll really have something!
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Post by blueadzuki on May 12, 2011 15:54:27 GMT -5
I've gotten the odd albino seedling from time to time as well, both in my corn and my beans (and my citrus). About the only idea I can think of, if you happen to have a hydroponic setup, would be to transplant it there and simply feed it via that menthod. And to be honest, I don't know if even that would work (most hydropnic foods are desinged to mimic the nutrients in soil, they assume the plant can make thier photosunthetic ones. I'm not even 100% sure plants can even absorb sugars through thier roots.)
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Post by spacecase0 on May 12, 2011 18:35:33 GMT -5
I am trying to figure out how it's DNA is useful
but I have no clue how you would feed it energy, maybe give it sugar water ?
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on May 12, 2011 19:50:17 GMT -5
I don't know how you could keep it alive, although that would be kinda cool. Feed it cornstarch? If you could figure out what kind of starches the seed is providing it, then maybe you could feed it more of that. but, yeah i think Chlorophyll is pretty important. It would probably be like if one of us was born without mitochondria. I have heard that there is one known plant that does not need photosynthesis to survive. I believe it metabolizes like a mushroom (Monotropa uniflora)... and now i see that your title is "ghost plant", so apparently you already know about this plant.
Last year i think i got a corn seedling that was white. I've had a few more in the past i think due to inbreeding. But, anyway this one was cool because only half of it was white. It was split straight down the middle of each leaf white/green. It actually survived into maturity and tasseled some pollen, but it was rather small and appeared to have stunted growth. I don't think it was able to pollinate any seeds. In adulthood the green eventually spread to the white parts, but it took awhile. I think it still had a white striped section.
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Post by steev on May 12, 2011 20:06:59 GMT -5
I've also had albino corn, but never one split like that. I suppose part of the embryo of that one lost its chloroplasts after it had started to develop, rather than right from the start.
It occured to me I could maybe foliar-feed it wheatgrass juice. If it survives, I think I'll call it "Dracula", living without the sun and feeding on the blood of other plants. Bwahahaaa!
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Post by blueadzuki on May 12, 2011 21:35:01 GMT -5
I don't know how you could keep it alive, although that would be kinda cool. Feed it cornstarch? If you could figure out what kind of starches the seed is providing it, then maybe you could feed it more of that. but, yeah i think Chlorophyll is pretty important. It would probably be like if one of us was born without mitochondria. I have heard that there is one known plant that does not need photosynthesis to survive. I believe it metabolizes like a mushroom (Monotropa uniflora)... and now i see that your title is "ghost plant", so apparently you already know about this plant. Last year i think i got a corn seedling that was white. I've had a few more in the past i think due to inbreeding. But, anyway this one was cool because only half of it was white. It was split straight down the middle of each leaf white/green. It actually survived into maturity and tasseled some pollen, but it was rather small and appeared to have stunted growth. I don't think it was able to pollinate any seeds. In adulthood the green eventually spread to the white parts, but it took awhile. I think it still had a white striped section. Actually, there are a LOT of clorophyll free plants. A few do survive by forming a symbiotic relationship with fungi. The classic example of this is Indian Pipe (which is probably the Ghost Plant you were thinking of) and is close cousins like Pinesap. Others are out an out parasites. A good example of that would be something like dodder, which looks an awful lot like bright orange silly string (so much so that the first time I saw it i thoght someone had just been having a party in the area.) and mention was made in a previous thread about the weird freak cacti that are bred to be florescent pink or lemon yellow, then grafter to a peice of column cacti to keep it alive. That vaerigated effect is also fairly common. In fact, in corn it's pretty much the basis of Japonica Striped Maize (which, from a color point of view, is what happens when you have corn that has the varigated trait and the trait to make anthocyanin in the leaves and stalk (as you might guess, if the corn leaf prtion does't make chorophyll, but does make anthocyanin, you get a leaf portion that is pink) Actually in point of fact, the white corn seedlings I mentioned in the previos bit were not really white as much as very pale gold (basically the color of dry straw, just still moist) with parts of the stem with a pink cast. Usually being vrigated has very little effect on the plants survival; the green bits of the leaves usually make enough food to carry the "slack" bits. Actually I've been trying to sort of "force" and albino of my own. Each summer, on my patio, there is a big pot containing a large plant of Spanish Thyme (the varigated version). At the end of the season I take a sprig from that plant and root it in a smaller pot to keep over the winter which becomes the start for the next years plant (usually by that point in the year, I've eaten the rest of it) Well each year, Ive been taking the whitest sprig I can find off the parent, so each year the amount of white in the resultant scion is greater. A year or two and I may have a functionally albino plant. On a final note, I may be setting myself for a real experiance with albinoes. You are no doubt aware (if you have been reading on this forum for any amount of time), of my project to propigate a version of rice bean that is sufficiently daylight insensitive to reliably grow in this country. To this end I designated two grow sites this year that were specifically for this (as opposed to most years, when I simply tossed my leftovers onto one or the other of the mulch piles and simply collected the beans from whichever plants grew and survived there). These two zones were/are (the second one hasn't been planted yet) for those beans that are NOT the standard color and pattern (for rice beans, this is read and without mottling) My Idea is to get a line of the fertile kind (which are also bush as opposed to the normal pole for rice beans) that is some color other than red (that way I can keep dumping the excess of the "no good" beans without worrying that the birds in thier pecking will get the two mixed up). Well to get to the point the one that has been planted contains all beans I've accumulated up to this point that are somewhere in the range of tan to cream, no mottle. This patch has just started sending up it's first shoots, and I cant help noticing that what ones there are are unusually small and pale. Technically there shoud not be any link between albanism and seed coat color (seed coats are all maternal tissue, and as pointed out, a totally albino plant could not live long enough to make seed) but it is odd if not a little worrysome (for some reason this year almost none of the mulch pile beans are germinating and none of the ones in the lawn (maybe they're irradiating the bags now) so the ones I plant on purpose (many of which are from previos years and so predate any current irradiation) are probably going to be the whole crop.) I have seen albino rice bean seedlings from time to time, so it could be possible.
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Post by ttchome on May 24, 2011 12:57:39 GMT -5
When my garden started sprouting this year, almost half my corn is coming up albino. These are seeds I salvaged from my failed garden last year. I really hope they survive, but I am not too worried cause there are plenty of normal corn. But it will be interest since I am vlogging my garden this year on YouTube.
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