On February 6th, I noticed that our first ulluco seed had sprouted in the greenhouse. In the three weeks since then, it has grown pretty rapidly, judging by the results reported by Lempiainen in 1989 in the paper Germination of the Seeds of Ulluco. As of today (day 21), the seedling has opened 3 sets of true leaves. It became alarmingly top-heavy and bent over almost to the soil, so I shored it up with some additional potting mix. Normally, I wouldn’t provide such a detailed blow-by-blow for a single seedling, but ulluco seedlings don’t happen every day, every year, or even every decade. Hopefully, this is a first step toward changing that.
Day 1: cotyledons just breaking the surface
Day 3: cotyledons open and hypocotyl lengthening
Day 6: hypocotyl reddening
Day 10: Red blotches developing on underside of cotyledons
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