Very cool I love the process of crossing and seeing what colors come out in the babies so exciting. Looks like you have a lot of crosses to play with. I look forward to seeing what you come up with, John

I went in for Streptocarpus two years ago and bought six or eight plants, they've all died on me except one named Wow. Thankfully, it's quite a wow flower. It has seed pods maturing now and the thought has crossed my mind to sow the seeds when they mature.. Are these plants self fertile as I've only the one plant now? If I sowed the seeds, how long before I could see what sort of flowers were produced?

Streptocarpus can be tricky to get the hang of, but once you do, they are easy. The usual means of killing them is over watering them as they tolerate less water than AV's but need more light to do their best. And they like to be potted high above the soil, not down into it. Like AV's they like a very light mix with a lot of perlite but not in too large a pot compared to the root mass.

It is highly unusual for Wow to be able to self pollinate. They are self fertile, but Wow is a Silvia descendant which means it has deformed stigmas. The female parts are usually not receptive to accepting pollen. However, if somehow they did, then they would lengthen /and/ twist. If they only get larger and fatter with age they probably are not producing seeds. A lot of deformed stigmas will get large and fat but are not actually pollinated and won't produce seed.

If yours /are/ fertile, seed pods can be harvested sometime after 8 weeks. Or you may let them dry on the plant and collect them right before they split. I like to lay mine on a paper plate to finish drying and when brittle, twist them back and forth to release the seeds (if any). A small pinch of the tiny seed then can be sown and the rest cold stored in your refrigerator. Sprinkled over top of damp soil mix, you dome or enclose that into a sealed baggie and put it beneath lights. If the seed is viable you may see germination in about 2 weeks.

Time from germination to first flowering varies depending on how you care for the seedlings and how you handle lighting. With very regular transplanting or other 'disturbance' and keeping them domed, you -can- get a seedling to flower in as little as 4 or 5 months. For some reason transplanting seedlings speeds up their growth tremendously. But for most people 6 to 9 months is more usual. Not only does it depend on growth and size for it's type but also on root mass as that helps to trigger flowering.

If you grow your seedlings under 8 hours of light a day at 2,000 lumens, it's going to take a lot longer to get them reaching maturity than if you grow them under high output T5's lights 16 hours a day at 5,000 lumens per shelf. Assuming all other factors of moisture level and temperature, etc are the same. A typical African Violet can get by on 1,500 lumens but most of them are a lot happier, grow faster, and bloom much better if under 2,500 to 3,000 lumens. A strep can stay alive at the lower light levels but will tend to grow and flower less than ideal.

Glad I found this post Hyn! You just answered all of the questions I had when I posted about my new strep! Thanks!

If I am lucky enough to get a seed pod or more,,,,,this plant was in with 2 other colors,,,,deep red and the other was deep purple. What a mix!!!!

Who knows what will happen? It will be interesting!!!!! Thanks again Hyn!!! Rosie

So glad if anything I post is useful, Rosie. Sometimes it's useful to me too trying to put random tid-bits into some order. I always find that when I try to teach something I know, I learn it better myself and the feedback I get is invaluable. Some piece of information may surface that I was completely unaware of!

I was just re-reading that post of yours about Dale's Polar Lava and it was useful to read Irina's comments and yours about mini streps. I know a lot more about them now than I did a year ago. I've acquired Heartland's Baby Egrets for example, which is currently my smallest strep and now I'm trying to hybridize more minis! My first crop of seed using HBE has germinated and thrown several tiny variegated babies.