How to force tubers?

[seerosenfarm.de]

Hi folks,

I just got some new, freshly harvested tropicals from Thailand which look like big crown cuttings with almost all leaves cut back. I wonder how and wether it is possible to force them to tuber. Is there anyone, who tried this before? I never forced tubers before and found the advice on victoria-adventure not clear enough.

There are quite some new varieties, like Wanwisa and I do not want to throw them away in fall.

Thanks a lot,
Christian

[Kat]

Float the plant
pot it up in a small container
very minimal fertilizer
Lower the water level making the plant feel threatened

These are some of the methods that I'm familiar with.  Good luck.

[seerosenfarm.de]

thanks for your input Kat,
but how do I know, the lilies tubered?

Btw, I have learned that Wanvisa seems to be a hardy, but anyway

Actually, it is a total shame, since we sell tropicals for quite some years now, but never tried to winterize them as they have always been discarded.

[tugo]

I am also new with tropicals and I also searched on how to as well for the lotus. Found the same ways given by Kat. Will try this year when they go into dormancy. I hope that is the right time?

[seerosenfarm.de]

is this the way you float the plants? i just unpotted them, left all roots and threw them in the pond. what is supposed to happen now?

might it be easier with nightbloomers? i found some little tubers there.

[turtlemike]

 

   If you float a small plant the growth rhizome will usaly take on the charicteristics of a tuber. For instance when I get a small night bloomer plant coming up around the main crown I uproot the little plant and just let it float just like you are doing. If the plant is small it will grow a reproductive tuber instead of a growth rhizome. The tuber will have a smooth bottom and few leaf scars.  A big growth rhizome will not do that but sometimes they will make a reproductive tuber on a stolon an few centimeters from the main crown .

  If I were you I would float them for a while to shrink the plant.  Wait till all of the roots have rotted off and all of the big leaves have died also. You will end up with a plant with few roots and small leaves on short stems.

  Depending on the plant the main crown might make a second or third crown while it is floating. If it does that's good because these new crowns will usaly make their own roots just below the crown and as they grow they will pinch off by themselves and form reproductive tubers with a smooth round bottom and few leaf scars. They won't seperate from the main growth rhizome compleetly unless you break them off but they will form a neck like a short stem connecting the tuber to the rhizome.  All of the roots will be attached to the new little tuber and they can be seperated eaisily. once the tubers are the size of your little finger tip or bigger detach them and dry them untill all of the leaves are dead and the roots are too. clean them and put them in very slightly damp peat moss untill you sprout them in late winter-spring. The new little tubers will store well in damp peat moss and in spring will produce several plants each. Plant some and float or pot some in very small pots and they will grow very slowly and stay very small . this is what you want is plants that are slowly fading out getting smaller as the fall aproaches. plants grown on the edge of death almost always make nice reproductive tubers that will make several plants in spring which is what you want because you can tuber some for next year and grow the rest big for your enjoyment. most big growth rhizomes will shrink down in size and neck off when floated eventualy as long as they are kept warm and well lit. It takes a long time for this to happen with a big plant but eventualy most will do it. The little necked off plant will form a reproductive tuber and there you go with several plants to tuber and enjoy. Some times the main growth rhizome will rot from the base slowly progressing toward the crown untill there is just a small bit still alive just below the leaves. as the rhizome rots away remove the dead tissue and when the rhizome gets small enough for the small rosette of leaves to keep alive the remaining bit of rhizome will stop rotting away and the bottom of the remaining rhizome will take on the charicteristics of a reproductive tuber and form a smooth bottomed tuber that should be storable and should make multiple plants in spring.

 Not all plants will do this and others won't stop doing it Miami rose necks off and makes multiple reproductive tubers at the head of the main crown and each tuber might make 12 or more plants from each tuber. Other plants like viviperous plants won't neck off or make tubers at all but dont worry just float the leaves in a black tub of water in full hot sun and the leaves will each make a tuber that will make a dozen plants each in spring and store very well. just let the water cool in fall and the leaves will all die and the tubers will sink to the bottom of the tub and just retrieve them and wash them and put them in slightly damp peat moss stored at room temperature and in spring you will have hundreds of plants. the tubers look like they are facinated but they make tons of normal plants.

  Rhonda kay and Miami Rose Growth rhizomes will over winter just fine stored like tubers and in spring each crown should act like a tuber and make several plants around the main crown.

  Rhonda Kay is hardy in zone 6b and I treat them just like hardies. They always survive and start growing and blooming with the hardies in spring. Miami Rose probably will also but I havent tested it.

  A small plant in a tiny pot with no fertilizer will almost always make a tuber instead of a rhizome.  Once you have one tuber you have it made.

  Wanvisa is a hardy.

  Good tubers will store for 4 or more years as long as they don't get to warm or too cold or too wet or too dry.

  I hope this helps.

[PondmaninAL]

So Mike, the corms that I have that didn't sprout this year, might produce plants next year, if I store them up with corms that form this Fall? Did I explain that right or did I just ramble?

I'm trying to learn this lily stuff.

[seerosenfarm.de]

Alright, thank you for that input. it helps a lot. i will track, what is happening to the lilies, and try forcing them either way, small pots and floating. Thank you so much!!!

[greenthumbnails]

 

   If you float a small plant the growth rhizome will usaly take on the charicteristics of a tuber. For instance when I get a small night bloomer plant coming up around the main crown I uproot the little plant and just let it float just like you are doing. If the plant is small it will grow a reproductive tuber instead of a growth rhizome. The tuber will have a smooth bottom and few leaf scars.  A big growth rhizome will not do that but sometimes they will make a reproductive tuber on a stolon an few centimeters from the main crown .

  If I were you I would float them for a while to shrink the plant.  Wait till all of the roots have rotted off and all of the big leaves have died also. You will end up with a plant with few roots and small leaves on short stems.

  Depending on the plant the main crown might make a second or third crown while it is floating. If it does that's good because these new crowns will usaly make their own roots just below the crown and as they grow they will pinch off by themselves and form reproductive tubers with a smooth round bottom and few leaf scars. They won't seperate from the main growth rhizome compleetly unless you break them off but they will form a neck like a short stem connecting the tuber to the rhizome.  All of the roots will be attached to the new little tuber and they can be seperated eaisily. once the tubers are the size of your little finger tip or bigger detach them and dry them untill all of the leaves are dead and the roots are too. clean them and put them in very slightly damp peat moss untill you sprout them in late winter-spring. The new little tubers will store well in damp peat moss and in spring will produce several plants each. Plant some and float or pot some in very small pots and they will grow very slowly and stay very small . this is what you want is plants that are slowly fading out getting smaller as the fall aproaches. plants grown on the edge of death almost always make nice reproductive tubers that will make several plants in spring which is what you want because you can tuber some for next year and grow the rest big for your enjoyment. most big growth rhizomes will shrink down in size and neck off when floated eventualy as long as they are kept warm and well lit. It takes a long time for this to happen with a big plant but eventualy most will do it. The little necked off plant will form a reproductive tuber and there you go with several plants to tuber and enjoy. Some times the main growth rhizome will rot from the base slowly progressing toward the crown untill there is just a small bit still alive just below the leaves. as the rhizome rots away remove the dead tissue and when the rhizome gets small enough for the small rosette of leaves to keep alive the remaining bit of rhizome will stop rotting away and the bottom of the remaining rhizome will take on the charicteristics of a reproductive tuber and form a smooth bottomed tuber that should be storable and should make multiple plants in spring.

 Not all plants will do this and others won't stop doing it Miami rose necks off and makes multiple reproductive tubers at the head of the main crown and each tuber might make 12 or more plants from each tuber. Other plants like viviperous plants won't neck off or make tubers at all but dont worry just float the leaves in a black tub of water in full hot sun and the leaves will each make a tuber that will make a dozen plants each in spring and store very well. just let the water cool in fall and the leaves will all die and the tubers will sink to the bottom of the tub and just retrieve them and wash them and put them in slightly damp peat moss stored at room temperature and in spring you will have hundreds of plants. the tubers look like they are facinated but they make tons of normal plants.

  Rhonda kay and Miami Rose Growth rhizomes will over winter just fine stored like tubers and in spring each crown should act like a tuber and make several plants around the main crown.

  Rhonda Kay is hardy in zone 6b and I treat them just like hardies. They always survive and start growing and blooming with the hardies in spring. Miami Rose probably will also but I havent tested it.

  A small plant in a tiny pot with no fertilizer will almost always make a tuber instead of a rhizome.  Once you have one tuber you have it made.

  Wanvisa is a hardy.

  Good tubers will store for 4 or more years as long as they don't get to warm or too cold or too wet or too dry.

  I hope this helps.

Turtlemike- This post is awesome and very informative. We should make it part of the tutorial section on forcing tubers.  There is a lot of info here that I have not read yet and the explanations really help!

[tugo]

Thanks Turtlemike, was very useful and informative. I second greenthumbnails for making it a sticky.

[seerosenfarm.de]

Hi everyone,

now that I've started my tuber experiment I want to keep you updated. I attached a picture of lilies that I dug out on sunday. The rhizomes were already decaying and so I removed them. Is this what is on the picture already a tuber? I am still not sure. And if yes, how can I proceed now, concerning removal of plant and storage?

Greetings,
Christian

[Sean]

Hi Christian, those are tubers but the ones you have are not propagating tubers that can easily be removed. You will need to starve the plants now by floating them until no new foliage or root system is visible. Then you can use these as propagating tubers.

Cheers,
Sean

[seerosenfarm.de]

ok, floating then So I will unpot the rest of the folks, too and see what happens.

Thank you Sean!

[Sean]

You are welcome, keep your eyes open for side shoot tubers, they are the easiest to propagate from.

Cheers,
Sean

[tugo]

Sean and Mike, thanks a lot to both of you giving such detailed and useful information and to Christian for opening the topic.

BUT I have one question, that always mixes my mind, could you pls help to clear:

When spoken (on tropicals) about tubers (ok, they are the bulb like things on the pictures) also mentioned always about "rhizomes". Which one is that? Is the new growth tips of the tubers are called "rhizomes"? and are those have to be separated later when they have their own roots?
Sorry for my confusion and if I had missed this point in your posts.
Thanks.

[Rad Michelle]

Howdy Tugo!
I love pictures to assist explinations, also i posted a growing tuber informative with some tuber pictures in the forum too but the word 'rhizome' in general reference to lilies will be with hardies. except, tropicals do form them as well under great growing conditions.

Hardies as you know have horizontal growth,(shown by the first photo with the arrow, note the growth is vertical but the rhizome is horizontal) which is why you would pot them differently than trops, but the horizontal pinapple growth is what we call the rhizome, and on hardies offshoots grow along the rhizome like eyes, depending on the type of root system, odorata marliac etc... but ive circled where my offshoots have started growing and between the "eyes" on the rhizome is where you cut to divide. tropicals cannot be divided in this manner of dividing a rhizome like a hardy.

 

tropical growth begins from a crown, and for me; they form tubers as the plant begins to outgrow its pot (needing repotting) or as its overwintered and gone into dormancy, when i pull the pots up in earlier spring to divide and repot i'll find tubers in the pot that the plant has made to ensure its survival so to speak, helps with no fertilizer. I also find them in the middle of the growing season as well, here is a picture similar to ONE plant i pulled to divide,


and these are the plants i got from them


letting the tubers grow themselves out instead of dividing (lazy and it was a huge plant ), i circled where i was able to tell i had smaller tubers beneath the crown because the plants are smaller than the main plant, and this is a tropical.


Here is a picture of a tropical RHIZOME forming. it isnt very big as i have had some about a foot long, they dont have a purpose (this is where the chop and drop comes from in the vic adventure how to's) so you can just break it off of a big main plant, but i includd it here to show the rhizome growth being the same direction as the plant, opposed to a hardy having horizontal rhizome growth.


Here is another tropical rhizome, again not as big, but the top is where the crown is and the lily growth, the rosette of leaves, i left the rhizome because the plant at the crown isnt established, but included the photo to show you a small tropical tuber forming, circled to the left, and you can see the small plant has already seperated itself from the main crown and begun forming a small tuber with a plant growing out. floating this small plant to the side force the tuber to grow into one i can use for propagating.

hope this helps

[tugo]

Rad, thank you very much for your detailed explanation and also much to thank your photos. Now all the pieces got together, for me. Actually, I knew and practised quite well about the rhizomes of the hardies but never thought that, the tropicals, besides the tubers also produce rhizomes like hardies ( but vertical) because I could not find even one single photo on the net. Now all clear after seeing the pics. Thanks again.

Yess please, let's make such posts as sticky because too much knowledge and effort is given.

[turtlemike]

 
  What I see in your picture Christian are reproductive tubers with smooth rounded bottoms like I described. It looks like they are trying to turn into growth rhizomes or are making a detachable plant with it's own roots at the crown of the reproductive tuber. Just dry those and clean off all of the dead roots and leaves and store them. In spring the single growing point will probably be replaced with several plantlets. If they are detachable plants that I see in the pic you can detach them and make more tubers with them and still store the tuber it was removed from. Drying or removal of the main plant seems to trigger the formation of plantlets in a storage tuber whereas planting with a dominant crown in good conditions will inhibit the formation of plantlets.

  Understand that the difference between a reproductive tuber which is USALY produced at the end of a short stolon just like a potato like Rad shows, and a growth rhizome is a continuum not necessarily a quantum leap.  One can become the other and there are in-between stages.  Or one can act like the other.  You just need to experiment.

  Not only that but every variety is different. Some growth rhizomes, the big ones at the end of the year that are covered with leaf scars,  like Miami Rose and Rhonda Kay will act just like reproductive tubers in that they will store all winter in slightly damp peat moss and in spring will make little plantlets around the main crown, or anywhere else for that matter,  that was last years big growing point.  These new plantlets will be easily detachable because they are pinched off or have a short stem connecting them to the big rhizome. The main old growing point may or may not pinch off I can’t remember. It probably depends on the variety.

  Other varieties will not survive the winter as a rhizome and if they did the big rhizome would still make only one plant in spring. Although most can be floated in order to make the main crown pinch off and then it will act like a reproductive tuber and make several plants. I hear some just won’t neck off and make a tuber. I guess they just fade away.

  Play around with floating some Miami Rose plants and you will soon see what I am talking about. I have floated them continuously for years and they just neck off and keep stacking tuber on top of tuber like beads on a string and each one will make a dozen plants and so will the big rhizome if you remove the tubers on it’s top and float it some more. It just about takes a hammer to kill a Miami Rose plant.

Viviparous plants won’t make a tuber for nothing. But the leaves will.

  Some tropicals will divide like hardies do. If you have two growing crowns you can cut them apart like you would with hardies and make more than one plant from one growth rhizome.  Lone Star will do this especially when growing very big during a long season. So will Rhonda Kay.
I have a Dauben that I’m sure has a few crowns from a single growth rhizome that has divided. Just break them apart or cut them.

 There are no set in stone rules just experiment and figure out each plant and you will know how to treat them.

 

 

[tugo]

Thanks Mike, it was great.

[waterlily808]

wow very informative!! I'll take anyone's water lily plants come wintertime or anytime if they don't want them! Hate to hear that people throw them away! It's sunny and hot here in Hawaii all year long!  Keep up the good work guys and gals!

[cindy]

 

[turtlemike]

 I just re-read this and noticed an aparent disagreement between what Sean and I said concerning the picture of Christian's tropicals that shows the smooth bottoms of the crowns.

 Sean called them growth rhizomes and I said that they were tubers. The confusion stems from the fact that they really are both. Like I said the diference between a growth rhizome and a tuber is a continum not a quantum leap. One can become the other and they exist in ALL intermediate stages as they change from one to the other. The more like a tuber they are the better they store.

 What Christians' picture shows in my opinion is probably tubers that started forming around a mother plant like Rad shows. These tuber-plantlets can go either way at an early stage. If the soil is fertile and there is enough soil and light they will stop becoming a dormant tuber with no leaves or roots and the tuber will sprout and start turning into a single growing crown with its own roots and will turn into a growth rhizome as a seperate plant. Usually with a small smooth round tip on the tail of the rhizome that is the remainder of when it was a little tuber. Also it may skip trying to make a tuber at all and go straight to being a crown with no resemblence to a tuber.If light levels are low or roots are crowed or nutrient levels are low the forming tuber will stay leafless and rootless like a potato under the mother plant. Christian's pics show tuber-plantlets that are at an intermediate stage going from tuber to rhizome. They are tubers because they have smooth rounded bottoms with roots only at the growing point but they are also growth rhizomes because they have only one crown each and the crown is growing FROM the rhizome and cannot be detached like plantlets that sprout from a tuber that has gone totally dormant. These plantlets are connected to the tuber by a very short stem and that lets you remove them. A true growth rhizome has no smooth rounded bottom and has roots cramed together all the way to the bottom and the leaves and roots grow directly from the crown or or the rhizome if the plant is big enough to have a rhizome.

 I agree with Sean that the plants in the picture should be floated for a while before drying them for storage or to make them make multiple plantlets. I made a mistake and forgot to mention that in the earlier post. They are too far along towards becoming a growth rhizome judging by how vigorus they appear and probably wouldn't store as well if they were not hardened off by floating them and shrinking them for a while. The longer you float them the tougher they get.

 This sounds like a lot to understand but the key is the continum idea and once you understand it tropicals become much less mysterious.

[turtlemike]

This is a Dustin Horrie seedling from seeds that Ken Landon sent me that shows one way that a growth rhizome can turn into a tuber.

 I floated it and the whole base of the old growth rhizome turned into a tuber. The roots completely rotted away and it turned into a smooth skinned hardened storage tuber. Each lump has many growing points and this huge tuber should make dozens of plantlets this spring if I sprout it. Other tropicals might not do this and only neck off at the crown and never transform like these yellow tropicals like to do. Some plants metamorphose like this but others will not and everything in-between. The last pic shows that some of the lumps have sprouted and are making separate plants. These are part of the big tuber and can't be pinched off but they can be cut off like you would do with a hardy or a potato. The storage ability of the big tuber would probably be ruined because a continuous tough skin is required for any tuber storage. Never break the skin ! They will rot.

 Experiment !

 Almost any tropical can be over wintered inside in a sunny south window in a black tub if it is floated in the sun for 40 days or more before first frost date. When frost comes bring it in and continue floating it in the tub. Once it shrinks down to the desired size you can pot it in a pot that the plant barely fits in with no fertilizer and it might even bloom. If you want add a light and a small aquarium heater but you don't need it. Once you bonsai a tropical like this they become very tough and can tolerate cold low light levels almost like a hardy. My Blue Aster has had multiple blooms open all winter.

 I floated and shrunk a giant Key Lime last year down from a 12 ft. plant with 2ft. leaves, that didn't even really have a rhizome, down to the size of a tub lily with a lumpy lemon size tuber with multiple growing points that was as hard as a rock. I put it in a gallon pot with no fertility and it takes up no more than a square foot in the unheated greenhouse pool. Occasionally I heat the water up to the 90s or so for a couple days but most of the time by far the water is in the 40s. No supplemental lighting.

[turtlemike]

 This is a large Tropic Sunset that has been floated for about 5 weeks before frost. It stayed outside floating until Dec.3, warm year. The growth rhizome has turned into a giant tuber, more or less, and the plant has shrunk down to this size ready to pot up in a gallon pot of subsoil to await spring in the greenhouse pool. They bloom the whole time that they are floating so you can still enjoy them. They just keep getting smaller as the old leaves rot away and are replaced by smaller and smaller leaves. This is what I mean by shrinking them. Now a floated plant like this is a very tough plant that can withstand anything above freezing and total darkness and or dryness for a very long time. Also a plant like this can be dried down slowly in a warm sunny place like I was telling Christian and basically be stored like you would any tropical waterlily tuber. It may or may not make multiple plantlets in spring depending on the variety. The potted ones will make a quick to grow big tropical that won't go dormant in cold spring water and will beat any early, started from tuber, plant that you start indoors to bloom and should be able to be put out when the first hardy lilies are beginning to bloom and they should be blooming tropicals in early spring right next to your early hardies that are just starting to bloom or sooner. DO NOT fertilize them until the water is into the 50s in order to keep them hard. I can imagine that a well fertilized plant like this might not like the cold as much but I might be wrong. I just know that if they have been flowering all winter in the greenhouse pool in water temps in the 40s with little sun and no fertilizer then why not move them out into the bright sun in the pond as soon as the water is that warm and not likely to freeze. Of course this will probably not work with all varieties but it works for me with everything but Red Flare.

 Anyway I hope this helps people grow better tropicals much easier. Once you understand them they are much easier to deal with.

 The great thing about tropicals is that if you have good large hard black tubers you can store them away for several years and grow other varieties for a year and then store them away as tubers for several years. Once you have lots of varieties stored away you bring out only a few varieties a year to grow in your limited space. This way you have a huge collection at your fingertips but they don't take up any pond or greenhouse space in storage. Remember to make new tubers of the year’s plants and then those varieties are good to go several more years in storage again until you want to grow them again. Date label your tubers . Ken Landon keeps them 10 years or more.

[greenthumbnails]

Wow, fascinating additional updates to this thread TurtleMike! Thanks.  Thank you for including the pictures, I recognize the growth rhizome/tuber cluster that you posted as something that happened to one of my tropicals last year when repoting.  I had not seen anything like it before and since I could not seperate the individual lumps I repotted the whole thing. 

[Sean]

 This is a large Tropic Sunset that has been floated for about 5 weeks before frost. It stayed outside floating until Dec.3, warm year. The growth rhizome has turned into a giant tuber, more or less, and the plant has shrunk down to this size ready to pot up in a gallon pot of subsoil to await spring in the greenhouse pool. They bloom the whole time that they are floating so you can still enjoy them. They just keep getting smaller as the old leaves rot away and are replaced by smaller and smaller leaves. This is what I mean by shrinking them. Now a floated plant like this is a very tough plant that can withstand anything above freezing and total darkness and or dryness for a very long time. Also a plant like this can be dried down slowly in a warm sunny place like I was telling Christian and basically be stored like you would any tropical waterlily tuber. It may or may not make multiple plantlets in spring depending on the variety. The potted ones will make a quick to grow big tropical that won't go dormant in cold spring water and will beat any early, started from tuber, plant that you start indoors to bloom and should be able to be put out when the first hardy lilies are beginning to bloom and they should be blooming tropicals in early spring right next to your early hardies that are just starting to bloom or sooner. DO NOT fertilize them until the water is into the 50s in order to keep them hard. I can imagine that a well fertilized plant like this might not like the cold as much but I might be wrong. I just know that if they have been flowering all winter in the greenhouse pool in water temps in the 40s with little sun and no fertilizer then why not move them out into the bright sun in the pond as soon as the water is that warm and not likely to freeze. Of course this will probably not work with all varieties but it works for me with everything but Red Flare.

 Anyway I hope this helps people grow better tropicals much easier. Once you understand them they are much easier to deal with.

 The great thing about tropicals is that if you have good large hard black tubers you can store them away for several years and grow other varieties for a year and then store them away as tubers for several years. Once you have lots of varieties stored away you bring out only a few varieties a year to grow in your limited space. This way you have a huge collection at your fingertips but they don't take up any pond or greenhouse space in storage. Remember to make new tubers of the year’s plants and then those varieties are good to go several more years in storage again until you want to grow them again. Date label your tubers . Ken Landon keeps them 10 years or more.

Hi Mike,

Is Tropic Sunset a true tropical or one of your intersubgeneric crosses? I have not see it before. The pads look quite leathery like a hardy.

Cheers,
Sean

[turtlemike]

 Tropic sunset is a true tropical from Florida Aquitic Nursery. It's great and the reason the leaves are thick like that is from the hardening effect from floating it. The whole plant gets tough and if you keep it from totally starving to death durring the winter with some light then there you go. I lost a plant or two this winter but it was mainly because the caterpillars defoliated all my tropicals durring last winter but they still survived basically as tubers with no leaves.

[Sean]

Thanks for the info Mike!
I see from some research that this plant is viviparous. Would you consider it mildly viviparous or heavy?

Cheers,
Sean

[turtlemike]

 It didn't make a single vivip for me last year !

[Timgod]

Sean,
Nymphaea 'Tropic Sunset' is a great addition to the autumn shade plants.
It is a better bloomer than Barbara Barnett, Afterglow or AlbertGreenberg.
It is viviparous but it waits until the plant is fully mature usually.
Dixie cup style it doesn't work.
There is not really strong vitality in the vivips either but I get so many late season that I get multiples that make it through so even if I were to lose a plant, I would have extras the next season.

Except for the single Nymphaea 'Hot Pink' bloom on the left this is all blooms from 2 plants of N. 'Tropic Sunset'