Medinillas from seeds

MANILA, Philippines - Medinillas are some of the prettiest tropical flowering plants. The genus includes 400 species distributed from tropical Africa through Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with the Malesian floristic region as the center of biodiversity. Philippines has at least 80 species. 

Some of the Philippine species are popular in the commercial horticultural world. A big horticultural company in Aalsmeer, Netherlands started with a singular Philippine species, Medinilla magnifica during the 70’s and is still producing the plants up to the present. According to Tan, Fernando and Rojo in 1986, M. magnifica is becoming exceedingly rare in its native habitat because of habitat destruction.

Medinillas are distinguished for their fairly large leaves and big showy colorful inflorescence. Some species may have huge bright colored bracts and large number of flowers (usually 40 to more than a hundred in some species) that develops into round fruits. Each fruit may contain from 50 to 80 small seeds. Each fruit bunch will give a minimum of 2,000 seeds that may give potentially the same number of plantlets. With this much number of plants produced from a single bunch of fruits, there is no reason why the government should allow the export of wild-gathered materials. Only nursery-grown materials should be allowed for export.

Propagation through seeds

Medinilla seeds may be harvested from mature fruits characterized by dark purple color and soft pulp. Hard fruits contain immature seeds that will not germinate.

Seeds contain tannins that prevents them from germinating. In nature it is these tannins that protect the seeds from microbial infections. After the tannins are leached out by rain water, the seeds will start to germinate. In commercial production, seeds may be soaked in water for 5 days with daily change of water. 

Seeds may be planted on constantly moist organic substrate like cocopeat, soil mix or on peat mix. Application of protectant fungicides like Captan or Chlorothalonil during planting of seeds prevents damping-off of seedlings. Seedlings may be pricked out and hardened off when they reach 1.5 to 2 inches.  

Seedlings are slow to start but once they grow to 3 inches height (takes 6 months), everything speed up. Seed to marketable plantlets (1 foot) take 1 year.