An Unusujal Seed & an Unusual Seedpod

[David]

I'm sure most of you know that I produced a most unusual striped Adenium swazicum  from Dr. Dimmitt's seeds.  I put pollen of this onto 'Spindrift' and produced a batch of vigorous very uniform pink seedlings, alas with no stripes.  We need to get to the F two generation probably for stripes to manifest themselves. However, this is very difficult as this cross is almost completely pollen sterile.  But this year a number of these seedlings have produced spontaneously some open pollinated pods.  Hopefully these will be selfings but we will have to wait until the seedlings flower to find out.  Most of the seeds have been quite uniform but this latest pod I picked yesterday had very few seeds but two were very unusual, one very long, almost one inch [at 24.94mm (one inch = 25.4mm)] and one unusually fat.  In Dr. Dimmitt's new book he states that A. obesum seeds (the pod parent) are around 9 to 11 mm. long and A. swazicum (the pollen parent) are 11-13 mm long.  Only A. arabicum has seed of 16 to 24 mm, and as far as I know there is no arabicum in these seeds.  There is no A. arabicum anywhere near these plants.

 

This is the pod parent:

 

and the pollen parent; it is a very week grower and rarely flowers but when it does so it is an easy pollen parent.  However, its resulting seedlings are very vigorous and floriferous:

 

Now we have a most unusual pod, both horns have fused into one:

 

Here is the pod parent:

 

and finally the pollen parent: