Thanks Aegle, wish you luck with your magic garden also.

Rahlii

No worries, why thank you. I hope to one day have a Mimosa like yours you lucky fish. :b


Much Peace

Very beautiful trees! I just want to add that I had some sprouts about a week old and left them out in the rain by mistake and they all perished. I would regulate the amount of water they are exposed to early on, not allowing nature to give them any >.>

If you could come across some mature tissue you could undiffertiate it with the right mix of auxins/Cytokinins and from there grow a full plant.

I wonder if hairy root cultures would produce alkaloids? Would be a nice study.

I do believe so, from one cell theoretically you can produce an entire plants, and the genome to encode for EVERYTHING is locked in each cell, you just have to access it.

^^Yes but tough part is often getting cells to produce compounds/turn on or off genes. Sometimes it requires differentiation sometimes it requires environmental stimuli. Often when you put a plant in cell culture it stops producing the compounds you want.

What a wonderful thread, I am inspired. Can anyone recommend a reliable vendor of seeds, ideally in Europe, though any will do.

I have an inquiry about the subject regarding mimosa hostilis growth:

I have a couple of these plants growing now and they are getting tall but I was curious as to what other growers used for soil and what kinds of stuff they feed the plants. I'm just using some potting soil atm and watering them using a few drops of miracle grow O_o.... one of them has been growing since December and about 2 ft now... it's sort of just one straight grower, as in it's not branching off or anything and just getting taller. Is that normal?

Vekk - Yeah, mimosa's tend to grow pretty tall and strait until they get pretty well established. You can prune the tip to encourage branching but be careful because it can also stunt the growth pretty bad if you cut the wrong piece at the wrong time. It's something you'd wanna experiment with when you have several plants.

As far as what to feed them, you can't go wrong with good compost and earth worm castings. That will give them plenty of nitrogen and other minerals for vigorous growth. General Organics BioThrive line is pretty good. They have a little kit for around $40 that has 7-8 different bottles of goodness and most of it is vegan friendly.

fidget - w0rld s33d supp1y has good mimosa seeds, they aren't in Europe though. Their site is a little hard to navigate but the search feature works pretty good. They have a huge selection of seeds and always give you a free packet of the seed of the month. I like 'em but some of the seeds I got from them didn't germinate (cactus and passionflowers). Most of the mimosas did germinate though once I followed balaganist's advice in post 4 of this thread.

Thank you MelCat

It's nice to be reassured that the MHs are growing as they should be. I'll have to get some wormies and compost though (grows plants indoors here since the desert here is kind of cruel to just about any plant that is not a cactus lol )

Just a word of caution for any aspiring growers, be very careful with your young saplings as they are fragile while they get established.

I currently have four two-week old saplings (2 weeks since growth, 3 since initial germination) growing in a perlite/vermiculite mix in a small humidity dome. The first true leaves have sprouted and they were all doing great, but I had them in maybe 60% sun. I moved the dome to a new part of the house where they'd get closer to 80% but failed to account for the change in temperature inside the dome.

After just a few hours I found nearly all the leaves had decided to do their best taco-shell impression and the coloration looked off. I've returned them to their old location and will be monitoring them closely, but at this point there's a very real chance I just killed off all four of my babies. Sad times.

Don't repeat my mistake.

You might consider acclimating away from the humidity dome. Mimosas like a dry climate, and they seem to do better in ambient humidity even directly after germination.

This first pic is a hostilis, the second and third are opthalmocentra.

Just for my information, how old is the M.Hostilis ? And i'm wondering, i can't see spine on the Mimosa Hostilis and those i have at home are really thorny. Could be cause of the picture definition dough.
My climate has been really dry the last year and my fellows MH which are in the ground are growing like crazy (with copious watering and some fertilizer sometimes ). Not those in pots, they're striving, so i guess they like space for their roots.
And i'm jalous about the flowers on the Ophtalmocentra .

Both plants were germinated in February of 2014, so they're 19 months old.

I started them off season before I gave up on indoor gardening, and my climate is not good for mimosas over winter. The opthalmocentra did ok over winter and bounced back quickly. The hostilis was in rough shape and didn't start looking good until at least last June. I can't plant them in the gound without a heated greenhouse, which I don't have yet , so they won't get up to full potential, but hopefully they will seed and I can plant their progeny in a better setup.

As for the thorns, this particular hostilis is inermis, which is what you call a variegation when a typically spined or thorned plant doesn't have spines/thorns. I think these seeds were collected in the wild in Brazil, so it was just lucky to get the variegated genetics.

And oh yeah...the Opthal flowering...
I was literally jumping with excitement when I saw the first flower. One of my proudest moments lol. Right now she has one seed pod developing, but the most flowers yet are on her right now. I can feel a few more pods in there!

Interesting. I may drop the humidity dome when I up pot them in about 4-5 weeks. Three of the four seem to have made it, fourth one is on the fence still. Currently they're in nearly pure Perlite with no organic base. Without humidity controls I don't think there's any way these little babies would flourish. I've never done a pure perlite start at ambient humidity. Would the roots possibly get enough water if the perlite is allowed to air dry? I have my doubts.

At any rate, they'll be in controlled conditions for a while still. I'm in a relatively cold climate right on the edge of where they should be able to survive outside so I was planning on keeping them indoors for 18 months until they were established and then planting them once they were a bit hardier.

WOW Love your mimosas! Cant wait til mine are that big *Drools*


Baby mimosas can be finicky, I've definitly killed some with overwatering early on. Ive also had issues with giving them full sun too. My best lookin mimosas are in a mix of full sun and shade and are thriving really well there, I started my babies indoors and brought them out once they were established seedling, gave limited sun exposure.

I tried a batch in my greenhouse recently and killed them all, overwatering... (well actually I was at Chaco Canyon and my mom was watering...)

Out of curiosity, what sort of soil have you guys found to be best once they're past the initial seedling stage? I'm currently leaning towards a 60/30/10 blend of a light, loamy organic soil along with perlite and vermiculite, but that's based more on intuition than anything else I've been able to track down that's conclusive.

Currently I've got them in small cow pots and I want to minimize the number of times I need to repot so I'm planning on taking them right up to 5 gallon terracotta pots once the roots break the cowpot walls (should be in about 4 weeks I hope/figure).

I use a foxfarm ocean forest mixed with compost

Yep, Foxfarm with a handful of perlite here too. No special mix.