Cana Indica seeds from Tobago planted on Mallorca

In Winter 2012 we went to Tobago for a few weeks. We stayed at the house of one of our members of our former website HomeForExchange.com. We saw some interesting properties on the island and wanted to see it and also feel the atmosphere and experience the friendliness of the people. It became soon clear that this was not the island we wanted to have a house on. Not because of the nature, the sea and the climate, but because we did not feel safe. There is a lot of crime on the island, people are not friendly in general, they see you as a walking wallet.

We did enjoy the island though. On one of our hikes we saw the beautiful flower of a family of the Canas, the Cana Indica, also known as 'Indian Shot'. This name derives from the time when India was at war to get the English out of their country as colonialists. The story goes that the Indian soldiers run out of lead bullets and instead they used the seeds of the Cana Indica, which are extremely hard. Nowadays the same seeds are used for the music instrument samba balls.

The Cana Indica plants we found also had old seed pots of the previous flowers, which we collected and took home to Holland. Later in 2012 we bought La Mina San Cayetano. In 2013 we planted seeds in our greenhouse and some came up. They come up every year, although it shows clearly that they do not really like the Winter period here. The leafs become brown and yellow and it doesn't grow anymore. But the plants do not die. They start to grow again in May when the temperature is getting above 25 Celsius and stop growing in October. Quite a short season, but... we do get seeds from it every year.

A few weeks ago I checked my seed collection and found small zip bags with Cana Indica seeds from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and from this year I also have a bunch of seeds. As these seeds are very hard they need what they call 'scarification', which means weakening or otherwise altering the coat of the seed to encourage germination. You can use a bit of sanding paper and scratch a bit of the hard shell of the seeds, but what I did is just soak it in water for a few days. Then spread the seeds out on wet tissues in a small box and wait a few days. I was a bit lucky that we have an egg incubator in the house right now with 25 chicken eggs. I put the little box on top of the lid of this incubator where the temperature inside this box is around 28 degrees, ideal for the seeds to germinate.

And they did (see the photos). About 80% came up already after 3 days and they grow their tiny white roots like a spider. Then we planted them in small pots with potting soil, just leaving the little white tip of the first leaf above the soil. We put it the small pots in a tray and covered it with a transparent plastic archive box. Under the tray we placed an electric heat mat, which is connected to a thermostat to keep the temperature stable at around 25 degrees Celsius.

The first leaves are coming up already.
Next month I will update you about the progress of the small plants.