7 replies to this topic

[woof woof woof]

http://www.lapshin.o...r/N18/exp-e.htm

EXPERIMENTS

By Konstantin Samis'ko

My name is Konstantin Samis'ko, I live in Beketovo village, Crimea, Ukraine. Cacti are my hobby for more than 10 years.

One year ago I decided to make a little experiment. I put seedlings germinated in the winter of 2001-2002 to the shocks of different nature.

As the subject for experiments I chose Astrophytum myriostigma, Setiechinopsis mirabilis and Mammillaria lanata. The most sensitive were Astrophytums (photo 3-8). To the contrary Mammillarias essentially didn't react.

The shocks over seedlings were:

• electrical discharge (piezoelectric lighter);
• exposure to photo flashes from the distance of 1-2 cm;
• low temperature (3-5 minutes in a freezer).

The first shock was made about 1 week after germination. First I joined one plate of the lighter to a wire and put the end of the wire into the soil. Then I placed other plate 2-3 mm over seedling, made 3-4 shots (discharges) and moved to other seedling. Consequently I treated all seedlings. Immediately after that I exposed the whole dish with seedlings to the impact photoflash 10 times. Finally I put seedlings into a freezer. Altogether there were four treatments one week apart.

Strangely there were almost no deaths neither slowing down in growth during the experiment. After 4th treatment the results showed up – many seedlings of Astrophytum looked very unusually.

It was unusual that there was no meristem. Ribs and areoles also were indistinguishable. After grafting on Pereiskiopsis they started to grow quickly. The most of them became normal, some (both grafted and on own roots) formed up to 4 heads (photo 3-5).

Some grafted specimens were covered by small plantlets like cloning callous tissue (photo 6-7).

One plant formed big knobs on the ribs (photo 8).

Seedlings of Setiechinopsis reacted only after few months. The reaction was a polytomy – some of seedlings had up to 4 heads. Mammillarias just formed side shoots what is uncharacteristic for this species and age (5 specimens out of almost 200 seedlings).

Unfortunately I didn't make detailed notes and didn't divide seedlings into different groups per kinds of treatments plus control group. So the results of experiment should be considered preliminary.

[zelly]

I would imagine these plants would have given their left nut to turn tables on this 'researcher' and see how he 'mutated' after being shocked, strobe flashed & frozen....

 

Just because humans fail so miserably at communicating with plants, does not mean they aren't sentient.

 

 

sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, which is held to entail certain rights.

[Nemisty]

If you lean in close enough you'll hear them screaming "KILL MEEEEEEEE"

[Thelema]

has anyone tried irradiating cati seeds and growing them out for interesting mutations?

[Halcyon Daze]

Makes me want to try the mobile phone trick on a big bag of seeds Maybe expose them to a string quartet mix-up with short bursts of death-metal-punk

[Evil Genius]

Harr Harr Harr! And the voltraping takes over the cactusworld...

[woof woof woof]

Yes Evil,... the voltraping trends slowly but surely...,.... but WAIT.. it's a Ukranian guy......  maybe it's not the voltraping that does it,... maybe it's because his village borders on Tsjernobyl that his cacti grow deformities   ;-)

[Auxin]

I wonder if hormone tricks might increase monster induction.

Auxin transport inhibitors (the hormones, not the bastards that wont let me thumb a ride) have been documented to promote fasciation in plants and adding 10,000 volts to that might be worth an attempt, as might including an anti-gibberellin like paclobutrazol in the mix.