Today the first pod on Kalinka had started to crack open. Not wanting to loose any seeds, and there was some I was sure as I saw something dark inside the pod I picked it. Imagine my surprise when I pried it open and found THIS!
No seeds but a flower bud! Too bad I never get to know if it would indeed have flowered. These images are real life scans of the podbud.
Can this have anything to do with the fact that it was pollinated with pollen from the same plant? Somehow I doubt it. Still, I got several other pods on my Kalinka plant from the same cross. Will be interesting to see if they all contain a flower bud. Be assured that I shall not pick off any seed pods before they have truly started to open.
A year later Kalinka continues to set "podbuds". In fact two of them ALSO contained seeds not just a flower bud! I am happy to report that not all pods turn out to be podbuds and that I have harvested some twenty seeds from her to date. But ever so often the pod start to swell real fast and, you guessed it, another podbud. Some of them open too and will result in a miniature flower without staminal column. The stamen has become transformed into the calyx and sometimes the pads can be found at the top end of the calyx UNDER the petals! This is indeed a strange plant!
