🍄 Gardening 🍄 The Convulvulacea Growing Thread: Morning glory (Ipomea-s), HBWR (Argyreia nervosa), Australian Woodrose (Stictocardia) and Ololiuqui (T. Corymbosa)

[Neuroborean]

Ok guys, so here we are,
first of all I want to thank everyone that helped me to start this thread and displaying the possibility of doing it, for the ideas and all, specially to @Nurse Ratched and @Mysterier

The first thing I want to comment is that I have been very interested in botanical entheogeny and more especially in ethnobotany, in a quite general way, not only concerned about plants with "magical" properties regarding the spirit and the mind but in general all those that can be plant allies, that is to say, those that have medicinal properties.
My view is that once you start to really understand herbalism there is a certain dimension that starts to become possible: an alchemical relationship between plant and body, a sort of animism and symbiosis.
So, if we consider that dimension (besides the more obvious one in a material sense such as the freshness of the plants) it is always better to grow the plants you want to use and have a close relationship.
My intention for the next few years is to learn to grow my favorite plants, or at least those that I can learn. My first goals will be convolvulaceae and some simple plants like those of the Leonorus group: (Klip dagga, Motherwort, Siberian motherwort...). As some of you may know my medium to long term intention is to set up an ethnobotanical store, working with many different plants, some unusual, from Chinese, Unani and Ayurvedic medicine (but not only: also from South American shamanism).

I am quite lucky to live in a sub-tropical climate so I think with a bit of luck I might even be able to get my own kratom plants, a tree that has greatly improved my life, especially my health in relation to my type 1 diabetes, which is honestly a bit of a burden on a day to day basis.

I will post some pictures of my (still scarce) experiences with morning glory and as I can, with other family members (I need to get ololiuqui seeds (soon) and stictocardia (more difficult, but very interesting).
In the next post! :::

 

[Neuroborean]

Obviously if any of you have experiences, advice or recommendations, it is the intention of this thread that you all participate. I have some experience taking care of plants and I have also done a two year course on organic farming but I am sure there will be many people here with more experience and knowledge than me, so... you know, we look forward to hearing from you!

I planted morning glory, the heavenly blue version, which is supposed to be the most loaded with magic of all the typical morning glory (there are many varieties, many of them not well known and may have alkaloids and actives not yet well studied...).

This time I have tried with 2 seeds, some bought in a nursery and others that are of second generation, obtained after planting here, in the macaronesia, a year or so ago.

The ones that are working better, MUCH BETTER, are the second generation ones.
It can be for several reasons, not incompatible:
- the second generation ones already have a genetics/epigenetics prepared to the soil, they have "naturalized".
- second generation seeds are fresher and stronger.
- the second generation ones have managed to root in a better soil (since where I have planted them is full of other plants and roots).
- the second generation ones were in general better genetics since the ethnoplant seller does not work with very large quantities and takes better care of the genetics.

This is how my plants started growin':

This is a bad bad photo, but well, you can see the first real leaves as well as the fake-leaves, the cotyledon (dicotyledon in this case).
They emerge quite quite fast, in less than 10 days you'll have most plant emerged, the seed is quite small so less than a cm depth is ok. Water extensively or, even better, wait till spring rain will come. I don't care too much about spaces between plants, they tend to get together in anycase, to protect themselves, kind of, so I only quit some if they are very very crammed, otherwise the space between plants is not super important. BUT... you need to be careful with pests, specially one that attacks a lot this plant, even when it's mature: mealybugs

 

[Neuroborean]

Here you can see the plant, that is growing quite fast, maybe in terms of a week, then when it catches something to hold on to, the plant accelerates its growth. I don't know if this photo was of the nursery seed or the second one...

Here we can see how it grabs and grows quite explosively. I was lucky this time and even putting it in summer (better in spring, no doubt) some good rains fell, which made the plant explode, and it started flowering very soon (it needs sun and humidity in equal parts but it is not very demanding). I think this is the most healthy plant.

 

[Neuroborean]

Here we can see the plant at its peak, flowering,
once it starts flowering it is a flowering machine, as long as it has enough sun, nutrients (a little bit of organic fertilizer, not too much, is enough, every month and a half maximum) until the plant decides to dry up. It is usually several months or until it gets cold, but it usually resprouts due to the seeds that fall to the ground each season.

More beautiful flowers. I think this plant will flower for a couple weeks more, then start going down, since it cannot grow very much upwards, so then it starts declining the power, so to speak, is good to have enough place for it to grow upwards, or at least semi-vertical (diagonal) I don't think that it does well on the ground as a creeping plant.

This, as a double example:
this is the nursery seedling, right now. Just so you can see that it has not given a single flower, I do not understand very well why, maybe it has a somewhat different epigenetic cycle ... and I have to wait more.
The plant looks worse but it is really just as healthy, except for the lack of flowers, it is 14.32 here now, it just lacks water.
Even if you water them, during sunshine hours the leaves lose turgor. It is something normal, but if you see the leaves like that you have to water them once the afternoon arrives (the good one also gets like that) unless it rains. A minute hose watering is enough, at least for this soil that saves a lot of water (it has lapilli on top of the soil).
It's possible that this plant roots are competing too much with nearby plants, that's also a possibility (they are not as close as the photo seem to show, but well)

Then, finally, I want to show where the seeds grow, I found this about the pollination:
"Pollinator: Ipomoea purpurea relies primarily on insect pollination, but is also capable of self-fertilization. About 30% of the flowers are self-pollinated. This 30% consists of lighter colored flowers. Cross-pollination occurs mostly by bumblebees and small butterflies (6)" on this page: https://climbers.lsa.umich.edu/?p=242
So, here it's the picture:

You end up with a lot of this pods, that grow a bit larger and go darker/dried, then you have around 3-6 seeds on each pod. I had a bit more of this plants some year ago and I got around 17 grams of seeds, but I'm pretty sure you can get 100-500 grams without too much problems if you know how to and have the proper place.

It can be a bit confusing to find the pods since once the plant starts growing the new flowers appear everywhere (but mostly in upsides where the plant is "newer")
this is where the flowers come, notice how similar to the pods some buds are..:

 

[Neuroborean]

Just to update, on my first flush (in Canary Islands you can get more than a flush a year) I got 40 grams of seeds.
taking account that the land is shitty as fuck, I grew just a few plants (10 I would say) and it was severely attacked by the horrible ant-cochineal tamdem....
it was quite a success, I guess!

 

[Neuroborean]

My next bet, and I will post it here, will be to try Hawaiian baby woodrose (Argyreia Nervosa) and Ololiuqui (Ipomea Corymbosa)

 

[G_Chem]

Right now I got two pots containing maybe 8-10 plants each in them on a window ledge. I’ve also got two compact fluorescents of a more blue light spectrum over them on 24/7 but turned off for some days here and there. They’re doing pretty well considering I’m hardly taking care of them. They are vining up into my blinds. Hoping to get them to seed indoors but we’ll see..

-GC