From: Theodore Held <oppenhauser2001 at gmail.com> on 2009.07.31 at 18:14:54(19606)
Steve and others,
I have tried gibberelic acid on my Crypts and I was successful at
getting three flowers from a reluctant clone that had never done so
for me prior to that. If you attended my Crypt lecture at the show
last fall (or managed to stay awake), I had pictures of the three. The
first two were bizarre, weak things with a host of peculiarities. The
first was worse than the second. By the time the third appeared I got
a bloom that was well within the range of what I would expect as a
"normal" bloom. I have secured the third flower as my ID standard for
the clone. It has never flowered again.
I have a couple of articles from Florida University that I downloaded
that discuss the use of such hormones. In the commercial world GA3 (as
the usual type of giberellic acid is called) can be used to goose
aroids to flower profusely and make them more saleable. It can also be
used to coax simultaneous blooms when a cross is desired. Messing
around with the correct dosage is the key trick because you want it to
look natural. But it's done all the time.
So when you're at the Home Depot and you get an aroid with lots of
blooms and then become disappointed when you can't get the thing to
look so nice after that, lack of artificial hormone treatments might
be the cause.
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