CROSSANDRA SEEDS

Earlier this spring I tried to germinate some of my oldest saved seeds. I found some that were dated 06-20-2007 that I had collected from one of my garden plants. I had put them in a envelope and wrote yellow bush and the date on the outside.

This guy was the only one that eventually germinated but do to the age of the seeds I was happy to get one come up.


As the plant grew it finally became familiar to me.

Here is the plant now in bloom.

The seed labeled yellow bush that was a mystery plant is now recognized as a CROSSANDRA.

Best as I recall I had both yellow and orange bloom plants

and mixed the seeds of both when I collected them. This guy was obviously one of the orange bloom seeds.

The Crossandra is a tropical plant from Sri Lanka and India. It loves the high heat and the high humidity in South Florida. Mine do best when partially shaded from the hottest sun exposure.

There are several hybrid types out now that don't produce seed in bloom colors of red, orange or yellow.

My older plants have weathered over from several years back and I do get seeds to propagate more.

Today while staking up some of my older plants that were beat down from a rain storm last night, I discovered some dried out seed stalks.

I was able to extract some fresh seeds from this older Cassandra. I separated the seed from the chaff and stored the saved seed in a recycled old pill bottle.

These seeds will be started this week in the hope of some new plants . As with all the seeds I attempt to start I have my fingers tightly crossed.
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