Buy Orchid Seeds
When you buy our plant seeds, you can be assured that they are freshly harvested seasonally, by hand, directly from our plant collection. All plant seeds purchased from us are the product of open pollination at the nursery.
buy orchid seeds
Orchids are beautiful and valuable. Most cultivated orchids are native to tropical and subtropical, and cloud-forest climates but occur worldwide. As valuable plants, you can propagate orchids through division or from seeds and cuttings.
Mycorrhizal fungi in the soil have an enhanced ability to absorb nutrients. The fungi attach to orchid seeds and promote germination. In return, the growing orchid uses photosynthesis to make food from the nutrients.
Flasking involves germinating orchid seeds in vitro using agar. The agar is a jelly-like mixture of nutrients and growth hormones. Flasking is the more popular method of growing orchids from seeds at home since it is cheaper, easier, quicker, and more reliable.
The seeds of an orchid are so minute. Consider this, the weight of an aspirin tablet is 500,000 times more than that of a single orchid seed. An orchid seed pod can contain anywhere from a thousand seeds to three million seeds.
Use 3% hydrogen peroxide to clean your seeds. Add the hydrogen peroxide to the seeds in small flasks. Transfer to a small bottle, then close the lid and shake well. Let the mixture rest. A few hours after exposure to light, the hydrogen peroxide will decompose to form oxygen and water.
While you can store the seeds for months, even years, using them immediately increases the chances of successful germination. To keep the seed dry, bury the Eppendorf tube inside a tub of oven-dried rice.
Bacteria, fungi, and algae are enemies of orchid germination, so you have to sterilize your working space. Place your flasks, beakers, and tweezers in an oven at 180C (356F). Leave them inside for at least 10 minutes. Let the flasks cool off before you close the lids.
Give the bleach a few minutes to work, then get the bottle containing seeds and the eyedropper ready for the next step. Dip the eyedropper into the hydrogen-peroxide mix and get around 3ml (0.1oz). Drop the liquid into about 100ml (3.4oz) agar nutrient mix inside a flask. Close the flask immediately after.
Some orchids germinate within a few days, while some may take months. Let the flasks remain undisturbed but check progress frequently. Only fertilize your orchids after you have spotted the roots emerging.
Eventually, the young orchids will have to move to pots filled with coarse tree bark and other materials. Only move the orchids when the roots are visible, and the plant is big enough to handle. Wash off the agar, then swirl the roots in distilled water to remove any sugar residues. Organic residues can attract bacteria and molds.
When your seedlings grow, you have to deflask and pot the plant. Start by watering the plant to make the roots wet and loosen the medium. This is a good process for deflating sympodial and monopodial orchids.
In a cooking pot, heat some water to 96F (35.6C). Submerge the orchid containers to soften the agar for between 30 minutes to one hour. Gently pull out the seedling, taking special care not to damage the roots. Wash the orchids in tepid water to remove any remaining agar.
Place the tray with the pot in a warm sunny spot. Slightly spray the orchid with water several times a day. As your orchids grow, practice division and transplant your orchids to bigger pots as required.
With division, instead of growing the orchid from the seed, you will be multiplying the mother plant. Division is the process of splitting the mother orchid into two or more actively growing plants. The baby plant is sometimes referred to as a Keiki and is an exact clone of the mother plant.
Always remember to keep detailed records of all propagations. Repot your orchid in a bigger size than its former pot. Time the division, so it happens just before the next growing season. Never use tools on your orchids unless you have first sterilized the tools and your gloves.
There are hundreds of thousands of orchid species, and each has special needs for germinating, growing, and blooming. If you are harvesting your seed from one of your plants, check whether there was a tag from when you bought the first plant.
Some orchids are easier to grow at home than others. Your success at growing an orchid depends on the type of seed, location and climatic conditions, amount of sunlight, and sterilization level. Some of the most common orchid types that people grow from seedlings at home include:
Yes, you can grow orchid seedlings in a bottle. Most orchid seedlings grown from home begin their life in a bottle. Mason jars, whisky flasks, and baby food jars are some of the most common containers used to germinate seeds and maintain seedlings.
If seeds are unavailable for harvest, buy from reputable botanists who have experience in growing orchids. They will know how to handle the seeds to avoid contamination. Expert botanists will also provide accurate tagging.
Keep your workspace well sterilized at all times. Consider where you will place your seeds before and after germination. Placement will depend on the species and how much direct sunlight it will need.
In the 1920s, scientists figured out that orchid seeds can be sown directly on sterile nutrient media (a jello-like substance with sugar and other nutrients for the seed to absorb), and germination could occur aseptically. After the orchid hunters of the Victorian era, this was the next quantum leap in orchids, and over the past 100 years, orchid researchers have developed methods and many different types of media for growing orchids in laboratories. In fact, all of the orchids you see in big box stores started off in a laboratory somewhere.
On top of the expense, effort, and expertise needed to set up an orchid laboratory, you also need a lot of patience. It takes around three to seven years to go from a sown seed in a sterile flask to a blooming size plant.
Important. Do not sow seeds in pots or trays, they will not germinate. Just sprinkle directly onto undisturbed ground, or even a wild grassy area. Please be very patient as they are very slow indeed to come up and you will see no seedlings for at least a year. Do not move them until fully-grown as they grow best where they have chosen to germinate. Please be patient as they are worth the wait.
Orchid seeds are very small, extremely light and produced in great numbers. Most range in length from c. 0.05 to 6.0 mm, with the difference between the longest and shortest known seeds in the family being 120-fold. The 'widest' seed at 0.9 mm is 90-fold wider than the 'thinnest' one, which measures 0.01 mm (because orchid seeds are tubular or balloon-like, 'wide' and 'thin' actually refer to diameter). Known seed weights extend from 0.31 lg to 24 μg (a 78-fold difference). Recorded numbers of seeds per fruit are as high as 4000000 and as low as 20-50 (80000-200000-fold difference). Testae are usually transparent, with outer cell walls that may be smooth or reticulated. Ultrasonic treatments enhance germination, which suggests that the testae can be restrictive. Embryos are even smaller: their volume is substantially smaller than that of the testa. As a result, orchid seeds have large internal air spaces that render them balloon-like. They can float in the air for long periods, a property that facilitates long-distance dispersal. The difficult-to-wet outer surfaces of the testa and large internal air spaces enable the seeds to float on water for prolonged periods. This facilitates distribution through tree effluates and/or small run-off rivulets that may follow rains. Due to their size and characteristics, orchid seeds may also be transported in and on land animals and birds (in fur, feathers or hair, mud on feet, and perhaps also following ingestion). contents Summary 367 I. Introduction 367 II. Number 368 III. Size 379 IV. Air space in the seeds 381 V. Floatation and dispersal 383 VI. Conclusions 417 Acknowledgements 417 References 418.
Orchid Seeds: Orchid seeds are incredibly tiny. In fact, an aspirin tablet weighs more than 500,000 orchid seeds, although some types may be slightly larger. Unlike most plant seeds, orchid seeds lack nutritional storage capability. In their natural environment, seeds land on soil containing mycorrhizal fungi, which enters the roots and converts nutrients into usable form.
Germination Techniques: Botanists use two techniques to germinate orchid seeds. The first, symbiotic germination, is a complicated process that requires use of mycorrhizal fungi, as described above. The second, asymbiotic germination, involves germinating seeds in vitro, using agar, a jellylike substance that contains necessary nutrients and growth hormones. Asymbiotic germination, also known as flasking, is easier, quicker, and more reliable for growing orchids from seed at home.
Sterile Conditions: Seeds (usually seed capsules, which are larger and easier to handle) must be sterilized without damaging the seed. Sterilization for orchid seed germination at home is a process that generally requires boiling water, bleach, and Lysol or ethanol. Similarly, all containers and tools must be carefully sterilized, and the water must be boiled. Sterilization is tricky but absolutely required; although orchid seeds thrive in the gel solution, so do a variety of deadly fungi and bacteria.
Transplantation: Orchid seedlings usually need to be thinned at around 30 to 60 days, although it may take much longer for seedlings to reach transplantation size. Each seedling is moved from the original container to a new container, also filled with jelly-like agar. Eventually, young orchids are moved to pots filled with coarse bark and other materials. First, however, young plants must be placed in hot water to soften the agar, which is then removed by washing in lukewarm water.
Germination of mature seeds from mature capsules versus seeds of in vitro-collected near-mature capsules of Angraecum magdalenae, recorded over a 4-week period. Means of four replicates standard error 041b061a72