A little bit of voodoo

Recently I was given a handful of small voodoo lily corms. My friend Michael has voodoo lilies growing in his garden, and they apparently produce offspring quite readily. Mike didn't know what to do with the extra corms he had, and when I commented on how cool the spotted stems and leaves of the plant were, he gave me a handful of them.

He also told me to put the corms in a tray with a little bit of water in it and the corms would "wake up". At least I'm pretty sure he told me to do that -- we had been digging bamboo in the 95ºF (35ºC) heat for a few hours and I was pretty exhausted. Maybe I misunderstood his instructions, but put them in a tray of water I did, and they liked it!

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I didn't know what to expect really, but each of them has started producing roots:

Well, each of them except this one:

Although it's got fungus on it I haven't given up on it yet. It was the only one of the corms that didn't have the tip of a plant coming out of the top. Maybe it's a dud, but maybe it will just take longer to break dormancy. They've only been in the water for three or four days, and I'm willing to give this slow one a chance to catch up.

Even this incredibly tiny corm has rooted:

It's the size of a pea!

One of them has already started producing leaves:

I guess this means it's time to get these into some potting mix, right?

Mike also gave me a full-sized corm which he had inadvertently sliced in half with a spade while digging:

He thought that these might still be viable, and I should also put them into a tray with water with the smaller corms (if that's what he actually said to do).

I haven't done that yet, as I was waiting to see what would happen with the smaller plants. Now that the small ones are looking good I'll try these semi-corms, but I don't really expect anything to happen. There's a bit of fungus on the one half:

Will that be a problem once it absorbs moisture? Will half a corm have all of the parts it needs to form a plant? I don't know. The tissue on the bottom seems healthy and viable:

So I'll give it a go and see what happens.

Incidentally, this big corm is where the really tiny corm came from:

You can see the little green "scar" where the baby corm was attached.

It broke off in transport. I'm glad the little thing is viable and growing!


Now I just need to make up some more potting mix for these little guys and get them out of the water tray.

A new species (to me) for my garden: that's always exciting!

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