If that is the case I would say what you have is a growth rhizome and not a tuber. My experience with tropicals is that a growth rhizome will usually not store well and will not produce more than one crown if that is all it had. The exception to this rule is Rhonda kay. I routinely successfully overwinter R.K. growth rhizomes with great results. they also act like reproductive tubers in spring in that many times they will produce several plantlets at the crowns like a tuber will. Miami rose is also is like this for me.
I clean my tubers and rhizomes and coat them in captan fungicide powder and put them in a plastic bag full of damp peat moss and put them in a cool corner of a heated room and forget them for the winter. I get nearly 100 percent survival this way.
If you have a growth rhizome that didn't make a tuber for you and you want it to make a reproductive tuber so you won't lose it over the winter and so you can make more plants, then what I do is to put the growth rhizome, any time during the growing season or in the fall in a well heated sunny window tub or equivalent. The more light the better. Float it with no soil at all for a few months and the crown will get smaller and smaller and start to make a neck between the crown and the rhizome. you will notice that the rhizome is not putting out roots from the rhizome body it's self but only from the crown right around the Rosette of leaves at the crown. Eventually if you're lucky the rhizome might make more than one crown around the original one, depending on variety. These crowns , in time begin to grow a little stalk between the rhizome and what is slowly turning into a reproductive tuber, each of which should be capable of making a few plants each by the usual methods. The longer you let these little tubers grow the bigger they get and probably the more plantlets you can get from each one.
The difference between a growth rhizome and a reproductive tuber is that a tuber grows from a rhizome on a short, usually VERY short, almost to he point of not existing stalk, or what you might call a pinched off point. depending on the cultivar.
The difference in appearance between the two is that a growth rhizome is COMPLETLY covered with leaf-flower stalk. root scars. Very rough looking. A tuber on the other hand usually has a smooth round bottom with NO leaf scars until you get a ways up the side of the tuber. Then the scars are VERY small and flat, coming from undeveloped primordial leaves or roots I figure. Most of the times these tubers NEVER put up a leaf during there formation under ground.
Viviparous lilies almost never make tubers, and I cant remember if they do when you float them but I think if they do it is very reluctantly.
I have never read this anywhere and I assume that it's common knowledge and I just have never heard about it but the way I make tubers from plants like Islamorada, Tina, Dauben and Panama Pacific is I put a black concrete mixing tub out in full sun and float all of my aging vivp leaves upside down or right side up in the hot water. I let the vivips float all summer and add new leaves as I get them. In fall the cooling water etc causes the resulting reproductive tubers to lose there leaves and sink to the bottom of the tub.
I get as many tubers as the plant produced leaves in the growing season. From very small from the later leaves to as big as my thumb.
These tubers store VERY well and produce LOTS of plants each in the spring.
Rhonda Kay is a very strange plant in that it's rhizomes act and sometimes look like giant tubers, with smooth round bottoms and that store like tubers and make multiple plants in spring.
Does anybody or every body make vivip tubers this way ? I cant be the only one. Let me know.
I am a relative trop newbie and I'm sure others that know more than I do can add to or subtract from what I have said and I welcome that.
