Long story short, I was sitting in bus looking out the window and suddenly spotted a very strong pink color(*cough* males are good at spotting such colors *cough*) so I just jumped out of the bus at the next stop and came back to see WTF was that. Lucky enough, it was the right season and I saw some seeds were there but I waited for them to be ripened so I picked them up two weeks later and did some research(well, googling "plant with pink pistils" ) it turned out to be Caesalpinia Gilliesii(aka. Bird of Paradise or Egyptian Silk here). For those who are not familiar with it, I can literally find no object or color code that could describe how beautiful that "pink" color was. After ~3 months of waiting, I finally decided to germinated some of those seeds and in less than 24 hours they started showing taproots and now they're about a 2 weeks old and I'm planning for transplanting them into bigger pots with a better medium very soon.(so smaller seedlings are what I grew from seeds and pics of adult plant are not taken by me.)
Hey Yazdan, how are they doing now that a month has gone by? I'm soaking a pair of these seeds as I type. After seeing this thread, I had to track some down. I also just ordered some Red Bird Of Paradise seeds.
What I've learned by far: - Truly resilliant plant. - Nitrogen hog: Much more than cannabis and a bit of deficiency will lead to lose a "batch"(dunno what they're called) of leaves which has ~12 little leaves. - Fast grower: hell I didn't even put them "close" to light! they're like ~2ms away from my HID lights indoors. - Loves organic soil: Manure! Lots of Manure! - Roots are growing TOO fast and too thick. be ready to transplant every two weeks.
Thanks for the update. I decided to experiment by sanding one seed and leaving the other alone. The one seed I sanded has a taproot showing, I'm hoping the other will pop soon too. Keep updating your progress, I'd like to see how it does.
My first seed has broke ground, it has helmet head and I'm wondering if the plant is strong enough to shed the shell on it's own. It's a big thick seed to try to remove manually.
Congrats! .period. Just let it be on its own and make sure you provide enough light so it will have enough energy to do its things.(the stem is green so I guess it does photosynthesis as well)
what a beautiful plant, dont think ive come across that before. Those long pistils are mad, i can see why its called the bird of paradise plant. the young ones also look like they have leaves like a Mimosa typically has. I'd call leaves like that fronds, not in the truest sense of the word but frond like at least thanks for showing me that
If you see them IRL at a close distance, stoned or not, you'll just stare for some minutes and enjoy the color and formation.
My pleasure. Also in this post I'm keeping some sort of journal and sharing my experience with different stage of growing it.
Too late, I got the shell off safely. It's actually greener than the pic shows. I sanded the other seed as it was still hard as a rock yesterday and it's got a taproot just starting to poke out. My Red Bird of Paradise seeds should be tomorrow.
DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Last night a strap broke on a hanging basket right above my BoP's and buried both of them in potting soil. The little red one is OK, but the bigger one snapped in half leaving just the original branch. As it has done nothing but rain for the last 2 weeks, the snapped branches were still healthy looking from being buried in wet soil. I gave it a fresh cut and it's now in my cloning bucket. I guess we'll find out if they clone easily or not.
cheers I'm not online nowadays so sorry about not uploading pics. good news is, I planted them outdoors and they seems to doing well. (hope I will get the pics and post 'em here)