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[fairdinkumseeds]

Just met a dude with 10year old caapi vines that have never set seeds.
Is there a way to force them or stress them or hormone treat them to make them set seed?

[EIRN]

I don't know if it is possible,

Where I live Caapi blooms at the end of winter, temps arround 15-20 °C during the day adn 5-15 at night. Almost no rain fall (30mm in a month), day little shorter than night.

But I am far from native place. In Amazônia day period is the same of the night and temps are always the same all over the year. Difference between seasons (only two) is rainfall....Caapi blooms at the little rainfall season.

3 Likes happyconcacti, fairdinkumseeds and dEEcor like this.

[dEEcor]

Maybe infrared light helps.

[Chicsa]

I met a dude here whos been growing caapi for awhile, and his set seed. I asked him what were the conditions, he said it got kinda cold but not cold enough to kill it the year before then that following year it flowered and set seed. But who knows? This was Central West Florida and these are the children and mother vine I believe... I'll ask him if he had any pictures of it flowering. couple diff vines in that pick but the caapi is so awesome... I could paint that tree and the caapi going up it

iirc he said it was around november. Which normally i believe is the end of the rainy season here.

1 Like Psylover likes this.

[hereje]

Not sure if this will work or not but i grow potted pineapple plants in illinois, indoors

I have no way to mimic the natural fruiting conditions so.... to make a pineapple fruit indoors you mix calcium carbide with water till it stops fizzing then dump it on the flowering part of the plant (the crown on pineapples) and it forced it to fruit 

this may or may not work for other plants... might be worth giving it a shot

[Ace1928]

If calcium carbide is working then that means that ethylene gas may be a fruiting trigger
It definitely increases ripening of fruits

[Ian Morris]

Which would explain why pineapple fields don't all ripen at once, but ripen over time because of the off gassing of more ripe fruit.

[Ace1928]

That does make sense with the pineapples.
Very cool.

[LIBERTYNY]

Calcium carbide produces acetylene gas with water and lime, not ethylene

 So im guessing it's something else causing it to fruit ?

[Ace1928]

My bad lol. I was out of it last night. Acetylene and ethylene are so close
And speaking of the similarity I do wonder if acetylene is able to trigger the same receptors in a plant as the ethylene.

Additional:
Was reading that there are a huge number of microorganisms that can quickly and easily convert acetylene to ethylene for a source of energy.
Perhaps the acetylene produced from the Calcium carbide is just being metabolized into ethylene from soil and surface microbes anyway.

I still can't find anything about whether acetylene itself can act as a hormone or not. Thinking I'm going to have to test this in the future.

1 Like LIBERTYNY likes this.

[FewTrueSeed]

I have forced my pinapple to fruit by enclosing it in a bag with Apple cores. Same concept.

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[Stonehenge]

My caapi flowers every year, it started when it was about 8 or 10 years old. The trouble is that while I always seem to get loads of flowers, very few set seed. I might get a million flowers and 50 seeds, or less. One year I got quite a few, a few hundred or so but most flowers fall off without setting seed.

The plants are huge, they get light from streetlights at night, I have one, the smallest, that never flowered. Two that flower a lot and one black caapi that flowers and gives a few seeds. Hopefully I'll have some seeds by jan or feb. They have not started flowering yet this year but they should within a month.

1 Like EIRN likes this.

[EIRN]

It may cause by lack of pollinators...usually Malpighiaceae are pollinated by solitary bees.
You can try manual pollination (lot of work to do).
Another thing is the temperture. In Southern states of Brasil, Caapi hardly ever set seeds..they are in 30ºS of latitude, same as Florida (30ºN)

[Stonehenge]

It could be the temps but the bees and wasps were constantly working the flowers all day long so I dont think its that. They work a lot harder than I'm willing to.

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