Jungle Plants Diary: Hedychium From Seed

This page will show how to grow Hedychium from seed and the growth rate to expect until they mature

December 2014

I picked some seed from a plant growing locally. I am not sure what variety it is but I think it is Hedychium spicatum. The seeds are contained in the red pulp, you can either wait for it to dry out or get your fingers a bit messy and pop the seeds out.

You can see that the seeds are bright red too.

I sowed these straight away, but I didn't document any of that (keep reading as I do with the next batch) but here are those plants 22nd July 2015:

In August I planted some in the ground, leaving the rest in the greenhouse. Here are examples of the size in November 2015, the greenhouse ones were a similar size (about 2ft):

5th December 2015

New Batch of seeds from 2 different plants, I still don't know the species but here is a photo of the smaller one

8th December 2015

I cleaned the seed up but didn't have time to sow them, so stored them for 2 days before getting them out again. I was going to soak half to see if it actually makes a difference but after only 2 days in a bag the seeds have lost all their colour and dried out. Feeling sorry for them I decided to soak them all for 24 hours

9th December 2015

The next day I sowed them on the surface of damp multipurpose compost and covered with cling film to keep the moisture in. (If mould appears they will need to be unwrapped). They are kept at room temperature.

23rd December

The first seeds have germinated

2016

12th January
As you can see they are now well on their way. they will be kept indoors until the weather warms up, then potted up to individual pots and put in the greenhouse.

26th March

They are now getting too big to be sharing the same pot

So I split them down 2 or 3 to a pot. I would have done 1 to a pot but didn't want them to take up too much space

Watered and now stored in the greenhouse

NOTE: The smaller seeds I sowed at the same time as these have all now died, I don't know why. they were kept in the same conditions as the surviving batch.

13th April

Last years sowings have started to reappear, the ones outdoors at the same time as those in the greenhouse:

Outdoors: