In polyembryonic seedlings the zygote embryos are normally, but not always, squeezed out by the nucellar embryos. This is because the nucellar embryos start growing much sooner then do zygote embryos, thus crowding the zygote out.

Are your seeds from a Meiwa kumquat

In my experience, Imelda, the zygotic embryo still sprouts, but sprouts after the clone zygote, and is less vigorous. I will sprout citrus seeds in cups, so pretty tight growing quarters, but almost always I have both sprouting.

Patty S.

Thanks for you replies!

I'm not sure if the plant was a meiwa or marumi but the fruit was round (slightly oval), with a sweet and thick skin, acid pulp and many seeds. The tree was small and looked abandoned with yellowish leaves.

The fruit was similar to these ones:

http://i59.tinypic.com/2h88k61.jpg

And pic of two of the seeds (they look like they are going to start walking lol):

The link above only opens up tinypic with adds, but no pictures. You can upload pictures from your computer.

steve

Let's try again...

Well, another surprise from the seeds. One of the seedlings is white.

If idoesn't grow any chlorophyll it's not going to last too much anyways...

Kumquats do not produce poly-embryos. Don't try to grow them by seeds, you won't find any nucellar sprout. And albino seedlings have to be destroyed, their weakness is too "strong" to give a good plant.

A little bit of reading about this

Percentages of poly-embryony on citrus cultivars

Cheers ;)

Yes they do. My meiwa seeds were Polyembryonic but my nagami seeds were not. Let the albino grow. If it produces enough food to live you may have an interesting plant. Unless you receive word of law that it must be killed by a qualified agent/authority, you'll be fine

I'm not growing the seeds for the fruit, or not only for it but for the fun of growing a small tree from seed :)

From the two polyembryonic seeds four seedlings sprouted. I separated them before planting each one with its 'brother' and marked wich ones where the smallest of the two. So far the first true leaves from three of them look similar: small, short, and very dark green leaves. The 4 one is bigger, with wider leaves and more pale green color.

Unfortunately the albino seedling died before it was even able to develop the true leaves. But! Two more seedlings are growing albino. Or half albino. The stem is green, but the first true leaves are cream white. I'm curious to see if with the stem chlorophyll they can obtain enough energy and grow more leaves, and see if they come white, green or variegated. This is the bigger of the new albino.

They will either turn completely green, or die. The chance of getting a variegated seedling is almost zero. Variegated citrus nearly always arise from 'sports' - shoots with a slight mutation which are then propagated.

Well I got the idea after finding this page:

http://goo.gl/raRoYB

As it happens, that's my own website - although it's an old page which I should have updated. The seedlings that survived all eventually turned green.

What a coincidence haha. And the plants never again showed any sign? Is possible that these plants are more susceptible to grow a sport, or the mutation just goes away? They refused to grow more variegated tissue even cutting the green grow point?

I don't know if someone is interested too in knowing what comes from these seeds, so I'm doing an update.

The remaining seeds sprouted and the result was one more (full) albino seedling and one with no true leaves, only the stem (!) that one is already dying quickly. So all the seedlings, except for the polyembryonic ones, where abnormal.

The two half white continue growing with no problems so far. One of the two is trying to green up with random spots on the stem and leaf veins, but the growing point remains white.

I am paying attention Thanks for the pictures.

Steve

I have an albino Meyer lemon growing under a 6500K, 1600 lumens bulb. Green stem, white leaves. All 3 leaves are proportionate, but no sign of chlorophyll in leaves. About 6 weeks old, 4" tall.

I have had several plants like that. I gave them micro nutrients and the next leaves came out greener. The white leaves never greened up and dropped with in 3 months.

In the end one of the two was growing pale green leaves with white underside after some that where spotted (white and with two shades of green), while the other tried to green up without any luck.

Both just dried suddenly from the tip to the first leaves and I do not know why, only the stem remains but without buds I doubt they will come back. Unless they can grow back from the roots... Can seedlings do that?

I had similar experience with Fukushu kumquats I grew from seed. Some lasted a while with the white leaves, but eventually the leaves dropped. Surprisingly, the green stems lasted a while.

Cory