HeyPK

I had the hypothesis that crypts are long night plants, that is, they need a night longer than some number of hours in order to trigger blooming. If that is true, then a flash of far red light at the beginning of the night would trigger blooming if the night were not long enough to trigger blooming by itself. Long night plants measure the night length by the decline in the amount of phytochrome 730 during the night. The pigment, phytochrome, is converted to phytochrome 730 (p730) by red light around 660 nm. P730 does not absorb red light, but absorbs, instead far red light at around 730 nm. When it absorbs far red light it is converted to p660, which absorbs red light and is converted by red light to back to p730. At the beginning of the night most of the plant's phytochrome is p730 because sunlight has a lot more red than far red light. The p730 degrades slowly during the night and is the 'clock' that the plant uses to measure the night length. Long night plants are triggered to bloom when the p730 level drops below some critical value. If the night isn't long enough, then blooming is not triggered.

My crypts usually do not bloom. According to my hypothesis, they are not blooming because they are not getting a long enough night. There are two ways I can test this hypothesis: (1) I can arrange to give them long nights. (2) I can keep them on long day-short night lighting, but give them a flash of far red light at the beginning of their night, converting instantly most of the p730 to P660 and getting the p730 level very low and triggering blooming. The second method is a lot easier than the first because creating a long night means total darkness the entire night. Even a little room light will have enough red light in it to change some of the p660 back to p730 and set back the clock.

I took two crypts, C. minima and C. longicauda, that have been getting a 12 hour day, 12 hour night. They have not bloomed for years. Last Friday and Saturday evenings, I gave them 2 minutes of far red light after the time clock had turned the lights off. I used a Kodak wratten filter that cuts out all light with a shorter wavelength than 700 nm. with an incandescent bulb behind it.

The C. minima has already bloomed four days later! That was quick! Still no visible blooms yet on the C. longicauda, but it may need more time. I will post a picture of the C. minima bloom in a day or two.

illustrator

If it blooms withing four days: would't that mean that it had already a flower bud? To me this sounds like a way too short time to start developing a flower bud/growing a spathe.

wabisabi

Cool! Very interesting.

This could help a lot of people identify mystery crypts they may have and are unsuccessful in getting it to flower.

Thank you for sharing!

HeyPK

Yes, but no flowers had been produced from this plant previously. It must be that flower buds are formed, but are only induced to grow when p730 falls below the critical level.

countcoco

Great idea!

I haven't been that into crypts for very long, but the varieties I've had bloom were always stressed prior to sending up a spathe.

954baby

Very interesting. I grow outside (south FLA) and recently I've been getting spaeths which is pretty rare for this time of year. I've been tracking the occurrence of flowers and I can plot the abundance occurring in early March-June. Very cool research.

HeyPK

The C. minima flower

Gordonrichards

Lovely spathe! A+

I've seen a couple of my bronzes recently throw some of their spathe.

-Gordon

DogFish2.0

I have to think this is a valid point from a scientific method stand point. I do agree you have strong hypothesis. I would be very interested toy hear about additional tests.

countcoco

Lol, it looks like you've got cobwebs on that spathe.

How are you going to provide them with the far-right part of the spectrum?