Bananas.org - View Single Post - Ricinus Communis (RC) Purple and RC New Zealand Purple

Olafhenny · 11-29-2013, 08:03 PM

Note, this post has been sitting in abeyance, while I was unable to post any pictures.
It appears, that I am still unable to post them directly, but have to resort to placing
URLs instead. and I don't even know if that will work. This is my first try at this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cincinnana

Olaf
Very nice specimen, awesome color.
Looks like your canna is the king of your jungle.
The seeds are pretty however they remind me of blood engorged ticks that i have to take off my dog occasionally.

Mike

The below pictures were taken last year. As I believe I explained I received the seeds very
late and they went into the soil (indoors) only in May and the canna around mid March. Thus
the canna topped out at about 9½ feet and the Castor New Zealand at ~6 feet and 7 feet
wide

This year the canna are only the highest plants,- by a few inches, but the Castor beans are
more massive

The pipe standing beside this canna is 10 feet and two inches long. Thus I figure, that the top
is only 3 inches short of 11 feet. It is quite difficult to get a tape measure to stand up this high.

These are actually three Canna New Zealand Purple one, which appears on the picture
higher than the canna (it isn’t) has bred true the other two are regressive.

I have learned a lot about the CNZP this summer. It appears, that it is a new variety,
has not yet stabilized. The seeds for all three plants stem from the same mother plant,
which I grew last year. This spring I grew a whole bunch of seedlings, selected three
for myself and gave the rest to our local garden club.

I did not select them for colour ( which I in retrospect should have done), but for early
vigorous growth. Two of them you see in this picture. The third is a self-seeder. The
other of the three, I selected for myself I planted elsewhere.

Here is what I learned:
• CNZP love deep rich soil. The ones pictured are growing in an old 27” deep pond,
which I filled up completely with imported top soil. The third one in leaner soil did not
come close in size.
• They are not stable enough yet to breed true
• Sow more than you will need and make your selection based on colour.
• Sow them no later than March first. It appears, that the seeds of the deep purple
ones ripen much more slowly. In my true one, only one bunch of seed pods ripened for
sure. The other is a ‘maybe’ The ones of lesser colour had countless seed pots early.
There is nothing, which distinguishes the seeds themselves. They all look like the CNZP
seeds shown in my last year’s posting at the beginning of this thread
• The true ones actually have a pigment channel as shown in the picture below.
In the others there is still that channel, but with much less pigmentation.

This photo shows sections through the stem, after I had cut the plants down for
disposal. The thicker ones were cut with a saw, therefore the pigment was smeared
across the surface of the cut. The thin one was cut with a pruner and thus the
pigment channel is more defined and it exists throughout the plant.
[color="Purple"]