Seedlings grew inside pod!

[keithp2012]

I have a grafted G. Mihanovichii that had pods growing and when I opened the ripened pod I found tiny seedlings growing inside! I had to do an emergency transplant of them to soil in a container. I’ve never seen this before in cacti.

[BenCSS]

That's very interesting, I wonder what caused it. Was the humidity very high when it happened?
The only time I ever found a seed growing in its fruit was a peach. It was developing into a nice small bonsai but unfortunately it dried out one very hot day and died.

[DaveW]

Its known as endogenous vivipary, you sometimes get it in the elongated fruits of the Eriosyce group = Neoporteria/Horridocactus types. Whether these seedlings ever survive in the wild I do not know. I believe certain red light can be a germination starter so maybe when these fruits ripen and change to red the light penetrating the fruit wall then initiates this type of germination?

You can also get it in Epiphyllum, you need to keep scrolling down the link to see the pictures.

https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/58/14/3865/458849

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _Cactaceae

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... gnificance

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... F285DAC2C9

[keithp2012]

Yes, the fruit was ripe when this occurred. The odd part to go with this phenomenon is that the grafted G. mihanovichii seed pods never split open when ripe, so perhaps being inside a ripe seed pod for months is the perfect growing condition for slow growing seedlings like cacti and light does pass through mature pods easily. I’ve seen this with tomato and eggplant seeds too but they grow fast and you actually see them start growing out the fruit!
My normal colored cacti or non grafted variegated cacti produce seed pods but these bust open normally and never get the seeds to germinate inside. I don’t know the correlation of this but once I had a grafted regular green cacti and that seed pod bust open as normal, so these crazy colored grafted G. Mihanovichii being so abnormal have strange genetic traits; like flowers that never open fully and most be forced open to pollinate. When you mess with science you get strange results. The transplanted seedlings are doing great though and growing normally.

[Nino_G]

I think this phenomenon (endogenous vivipary) also sometimes occurs in Escobaria vivipara (hence the species' name).

[Tom in Tucson]

Yes, the fruit was ripe when this occurred. The odd part to go with this phenomenon is that the grafted G. mihanovichii seed pods never split open when ripe, so perhaps being inside a ripe seed pod for months is the perfect growing condition for slow growing seedlings like cacti and light does pass through mature pods easily. I’ve seen this with tomato and eggplant seeds too but they grow fast and you actually see them start growing out the fruit!
My normal colored cacti or non grafted variegated cacti produce seed pods but these bust open normally and never get the seeds to germinate inside. I don’t know the correlation of this but once I had a grafted regular green cacti and that seed pod bust open as normal, so these crazy colored grafted G. Mihanovichii being so abnormal have strange genetic traits; like flowers that never open fully and most be forced open to pollinate. When you mess with science you get strange results. The transplanted seedlings are doing great though and growing normally.

The 1st species which comes to mind use this condition to their apparent advantage of immense distribution, and of their many varieties is Ecobaria vivipara. As was pointed out by Nino_G, it was named for the viviparous tendency often encountered in their maturing fruit.

[FredBW]

I was thinking about posting a thread asking if Escobaria were hard to germinate when I just found this thread. Interesting.
I have bought several types of escobaria seeds from Mesa Garden with really poor results, Well missouriensis and vivipara but 2,or 3 kinds of each.
I have always had great results from Mesa garden seeds except for escobaria. Maybe this might have something to do with it.
Live Escobaria aren't easy to find either. Hardly even see them on Ebay. Out of at least 30 Missouriensis seeds I have 4 seedlings. I have a few Vivipara sprouts coming up I sewed a month or so ago. They are extremely small. But they are few and far between.
I had no idea that's what vi·vip·a·rous meant. I guess I'll just keep trying

[MrXeric]

I once found a couple Astrophytum myriostigma seeds that germinated within their seed pod.

Britton and Rose observed this behavior in Selenicereus grandiflorus fruit.
From their book The Cactaceae:

S grandiflorus seed germ inside fruit.PNG (164.68 KiB) Viewed 9016 times