<center> Growing your OWN Salvia Divinorum Seeds:
A Simple Step by Step Illustrated Guide.
Project begun September 25th, 2006
Last Updated: October 8th, 2006
<hr color="green" size="3" width="100%"> Preamble: Why this Page?
</center> Do you grow Salvia Divinorum? Have you noticed that every fall your plants want to bloom? I have noticed that the prevailing attitude towards Salvia Divinorum is that it does not set viable seeds. It is mostly to combat this attitude that I have created this web page. Research and experimentation from 1980 through 2006 have proven Salvia Divinorum to be self fertile. Salvia Will readily set seeds if you give her a Chance. You just need to know the signposts on the road to seeds: what to look for.
Among the Goals on this page are:
- To encourage you to Hand Pollinate your Salvia Divinorum flowers this season.
- To attempt to collect statistics on what percentage of pollinated flowers develop into seed bearing calyces and perhaps more accurate germination statistics.
- To encourage you to plant those seeds and increase the genetic diversity of this species.
- To provide a ready source of small quantities of the small Ziploc bags ideally suited for seed capture. I bought 1000 of them so you did not have to.
Any quotation used by me is either from an e-mail, or from THIS research paper, accepted in 1987, that is hosted on the Salvia Divinorum Research and Information Center Web Site.
Equipment you will need to Grow your own Seeds:
- Salvia Divinorum plants that are 18 inches or taller (that are blooming or showing signs of blooming.)
- Eyes
- Hands
- Patience
- A modicum of eye/hand coordination
- A few Minutes of Time each day
Optional Equipment (highly recommended): - Small {1 inch to 1/2 inch square} Ziploc bags (to insure seed capture)
- A magnifying glass
- And a camera: so you can show off your success.
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You will notice that the first thing on the list of Equipment that you will need is "Salvia Divinorum plants that are 18 inches or taller (that are blooming or showing signs of blooming.)" I cannot stress enough the importance of having flowers on your plant in order to get seeds from it. ;-)
MOST Salvia Plants in the Wild bloom when the days get shorter. My Salvia Divinorum garden shows signs every October that it is going to bloom.
"During our conversations Don Alejandro told us that the flowers produced seed that could be planted to grow the Salvia."
"From herbarium sheets of Oaxacan collections, we noted that flowering specimens were collected only between late August and March, a time of short days (Valdés 1983). In Mexico City (which is not far north of the collection localities), daylength reaches a maximum of 13h in June and decreases to about 12 h in October (Salisbury and Ross 1978). Although most plants affected by daylength need exposure to a certain critical dark period to begin the development of flower buds, some need a tapered decrease in daylength to induce flowering (Bickford and Dunn 1973)."
"Outdoor and greenhouse experiments
About 50 plants were cultivated in an Ann Arbor garden during summers. They were put in a greenhouse (Matthaei Botanical Gardens) in September 1980 and placed on 28 in tall 6 ft by 17ft benches. Minimum greenhouse temperature was 10°C. Maximum temperature (10-30°C) depended on outside conditions.
Experimental results
Buds were observed in late October. Flowering began on 10 Nov and continued until early January 1981. All specimens bloomed. Similar results occurred during 1981 and 1982."
"Of 14 hand-pollinated flowers (later protected by glassine envelopes), four set seed, which was collected on 16 Dec 1980."
If your Plants get Natural Light they will attempt to Bloom for you each Fall UNLESS they are Exposed to TOO Much Man Made Lighting during the Night. Check to make sure they are not under the Streetlight, or next to the Late Night Tennis Courts.
"Growth chamber experiments
Sherer Environmental Chambers models CEL-512-37 and CEL-34-14 were freshly outfitted with incandescent (93W) and cool white VHO fluorescent bulbs. Eleven plants from each of the three sources were divided between the two chambers. Plant-top light-intensity varied from 2,800-3,300 ft-c, depending on plant height and the chamber involved. Controls were set for maximum relative humidity (measurements varied between 50 and 100%). Temperature was set at 22°C day (16H) and 17°C night (8 H). Plants were grown under these conditions for 12 wk. Beginning 24 Jan 1980, daylength was decreased from 16 to 11 h over a 4 wk period.
Experimental results
Buds were noted on 4 Apr 1980; flowering branches were collected on 20 Apr 1980 (Valdés s.n., 22 Oct 1980, MICH). All plants flowered at a height less than 1.0 m; the flowers had a purplish calyx and white corolla (flower). Repeating the experiments with an abrupt change from 16 h to 11 h days indicated tapered decreases in daylength were not necessary to induce flowering. Increasing daylength to over 12 h caused plant to revert to vegetative growth and abort flowers (Valdés s.n., 15 June 1981, MICH). Later a malfunctioning timer switch indicated that less than a week of 24h days induced this reversion, even if conditions were returned to short (11h) days."
This Means that if you are growing Salvia Divinorum in a basement, or somewhere where it gets NO Natural light: you can Induce Flowering simply by setting your daylight photoperiod down to 11 hours of Daylight. There is no need to taper the daylight hours down to 11 hours slowly: it can be done overnight.
Summary: IF the plants get a sufficiently long period of uninterrupted (and DARK) darkness each night they will bloom for you. It's their instincts at work. This plant will follow it's instincts to bloom and set viable seeds.
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<center>Part Two: Hand Pollination and Seed Harvesting.
Signposts on the road: What to Look for.
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The first sign that your plants are going to bloom is the appearance of the buds that will eventually become the flowering stalks.
The second sign on the road to seeds is the lengthening of the flowering stalks.
The third sign on the road to seeds is the further lengthening of the flowering stalks and Flower Buds Appear.
The fourth sign on the road to seeds is the Flower Buds begin to Bloom.
Get Ready: It's time for YOU to do YOUR Part .....
OK, you've got a Salvia Plant with Flowers on it: Now what do you Do?
You wait until a flower falls off of the Plant: pick up the freshest fallen flower and look at it. Sticking out of the open end of the flower is something that looks like a Forked snakes tongue: This is called the pistle. The Inside of the Fork on the End of the Pistil is Called the Stigma: it has the Receiving Channels for the Pollen in it. Below the pistle are two small Brownish or yellow-whiteish pinheads sticking out on small white threads: these are called anthers.
Flower Parts illustration: the steps on the Road to seeds
What you want to do now is to wipe the anthers that are on the flower in your hand right along the middle of the forked tongue (the Stigma) of the remaining flowers on your plant. Wipe the protruding and fuzzy pinheads on the flower you are holding along both sides of the inside of the White Forked Snakes Tongue protruding from the remaining flowers on your plant (the Stigma). Wipe them carefully along the inside of the "V" Shape made by the end of the Pistle.
The pollen is invisible and you'll not be able to tell if you've done it correctly. (it takes but a Second or Two for a quick wipe.) If you do this twice a day, you have six chances to pollinate any given flower, because the flowers only stay on the plant for about three days after they open.
The fifth Sign: After about three days the flower will fall out of the little purple cup it bloomed out of. This little purple cup is called a calyx. This is where the seeds will be forming in the next four weeks.
Mr. Siebert wrote me: "Another way to do it is to remove the anthers from one flower with tweezers, and then use the isolated anthers to dust the stigma (the forked end of the pistil) with pollen. If fertilization is successful, the calyx of the fertilized flower will stay on the plant for several weeks after pollination. If it is unsuccessful, it will fall off a few days after the pollination attempt."
He also wrote: "The mature seeds are pretty small (1.8ˆ2.1 mm long, 1ˆ1.2 mm wide). They are green when immature. They are dark brown when mature. If you peek inside the calyces with a hand lens, you will see the developing nutlets.
You'll also notice a cream-colored protuberance alongside the seeds. This is the gynobase horn. Each calyx can produce up to four seeds. Watch for the seeds to change color from green to brown. When they turn dark brown they are ripe. Once they are ripe, they will fall out of the calyx easily. Valdés noted that it took 25-27 days between date of pollination and date of seed harvest on the plants that he hand-pollinated."
So, you hand pollinate all the flowers you can get to twice a day using the freshest fallen Flower. You do this throughout the entire blooming season. Every little purple cup (calyx) that stays on the plant over a week after the flower has fallen out is developing seeds inside of it.
The Sixth Sign: You get your magnifying glass, and you look up inside of those calyces that refuse to fall off the Plant.
If you see seeds like these ripening inside the calyces, you should slip a small covering over the calyx to prevent the loss of seeds. The scientists in the paper I am citing from used small glassine envelopes: last year I used 1 inch by 1 inch small Ziploc bags to cover the calyces and Prevent seed loss.
This year I shall be using 5/8 inch by 5/8 inch 2 mil Ziploc bags to cover the calyces. (This is a better Size as the 1 in. by 1 in. bags were a bit large.) I bought a thousand of them and will sell them in Pairs Only at Two for three cents (3¢ for 2 bags) if you wish to buy some from Me.
I have determined that there is an easy way to tell, just by looking, whether not any given calyx is developing seeds. I have observed that the cross section shape of the calyx that the flower has just fallen out of is oval when you look right into it. If viewed from the side its shape is conical or tapered. If pollination is successful the cross section shape of the calyx, over the next four weeks, becomes square and the calyx itself elongates into a boxy and square looking tube. This is because the septals continue growing as the seeds ripen, and the seeds push out, as they ripen, in four different directions to get a distinct square cross section. At the start: the width of the open end is MUCH Wider than the closed end. But in 3 weeks time the closed end swells up as the calyx lengthens until both ends are the same width. In addition: you can actually see the shadow of the seeds forming up inside the calyx. This is a good time to put a protective baggie over the calyx.
After four weeks the seeds are ripe: carefully remove the calyx and ripe seeds with the Ziploc bag still covering them.
Happy Harvesting!
