The berries fell off yesterday and I took half and planted them and the other half is in the fridge. The flower was pollinated on July 6 and the seeds ripened and fell off on August 18. There are about 4 - 5 seeds per berry.

Those are incredible!!

They are neat .. I should have put something next to them for size.

Very cool Anne. Good luck with the seedlings.

Thanks!

Baby picture! In a few days I'll take half of them and transplant into a more manageable container. Hoping I can keep at least a few going until they start making colors! The two in the upper right hand corner are just germinating.

Sweet.

Indeed! Very exciting. They started germinating 3 days ago. I hope the seeds in the fridge will stay viable for a month or so.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they mature.

I need to find out what makes caladiums go dormant - soil temperature? Color of light? With winter coming on I need to figure out how to keep them going.

Sounds like a @Lariann question to me. I'm dealing with some Dracontium amazonense tubercles (tuberclings?) which I'm told don't go dormant for a year or more.

I T-mailed Bill and he said it's soil temperature so I'll keep the babies on a heating pad in the house for the winter and keep my fingers crossed.

Well done, Anne! I've never stored Caladium berries in the fridge so I'd like to know if the cold storage affects the seed germination in any adverse way. If you want to experiment, you could try bringing some out each week and seeing if the germination rate changes as days/weeks go by.

Thanks! I just might try a few and see if they are still viable. With the ones I have that have germinated, I separated the seeds from the berries with just a few and the rest I just sowed the whole intact berry .. that didn't seem to affect germination at all.

Well I finally got the nerve to transplant half of them. I noticed a few were starting to put out true leaves so I only did half in case they don't take kindly to transplanting at this stage. I also noticed an interesting mutation on one of the cotyledons which is very pale green. There is definitely chlorophyll present so I don't think it's a lethal mutation. It hasn't produced a true leaf yet so it will be interesting to see how things develop.

Way to go Anne !!

What is your germination rate Anne?

So far with the original batch I'd wager probably 90% plus! I haven't sown the ones in the fridge yet - don't have a clue if they are viable or not. I'll try out a few later on - at the moment I'm playing catch up with a lot of things.

Here is a picture of the true leaves!

Update on my Caladium Seedlings! I've lost about 20% but the ones left are going strong and looking like they are starting to form little bulbs. Being winter they are growing extremely slowly but should speed up hopefully when it gets warmer. I still have them in the greenhouse that doesn't get below 48°. I considered bringing them into the house but was concerned about the lack of humidity inside.