Glaucidium palmatum ‘Album’

Description

Thanks to a generous friend I can offer this most beautiful and a bit rare woodland plant with large white-cream flowers. Not difficult to grow from seeds but of course it needs a few years to get to the flowering stage.
Seedlings from this white flower form (given sometimes as G. palmatum var. leucanthum) may not come 100% true from seeds. You may end up with satiny- lavender flowers – what a tragedy! :)

Joke left apart, it is a simply superb plant for the shade garden in any color it may be.

Germination: my method involves treating the seeds with GA3 and sowing at warm (under lights in February). Most of the seedlings will grow only cotyledon leaves in the first season, actually growing for a few months and then going dormant until next year (keep your pots!).
Some seedlings will also form the true leaves after a short period of dormancy. For this reason it is best not to prick out the seedlings but keep them growing in the same pot for the first year.

Alternatively, sow the seeds regularly in late fall, in which case some seeds will germinate in the spring and some in the second year after a warm cycle. The seeds germination pattern is similar with Podophyllum hexandrum. It could be that the seeds require first a few weeks of warm/moist stratification; this would explain the germination in the second year when sown in the winter.

Some seeds will always germinate in the second year from sowing, patience! (and do not prick out the first germinated seeds). Depending on how well they are grown, the first flower can appear in the third or fourth year.