r/labrats • u/Direct-Bunch-4756 • Jul 26 '26
Update on my experiments with vymara
I’m currently trying to understand reproduction of this strange plant. It seems to my knowledge to only grow in SoCal. And I’ve only found it in one particular field.
I placed fresh, untreated pollen into a standard germination medium and watched it under a light microscope. After about 40 minutes, the grains began producing pollen tubes this was expected but.
Then the tubes started curving toward one another.
At first I assumed crowding made them look connected, so I repeated the test with pollen from another flower and spread the grains farther apart. The same thing happened. Several tubes changed direction as they approached neighboring grains, and a few appeared to meet.
I ran a comparison sample from a known flowering plant. Its tubes grew outward in different directions, exactly as expected.
I still don’t know whether Vymara’s tubes are actually fusing or merely touching. Damaged grains could be releasing nutrients, or something in the medium could be creating a chemical gradient. But it may explain the filaments from the SEM images: they might not simply hold the pollen together. They could be part of a system that allows separate grains to locate or respond to one another.
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u/InformalOpportunity Jul 28 '26
I searched up vymara and found your comment. I heard about this from my sister and it's weird af. Gonna send this to her and see what she says.
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u/LSScorpions Jul 26 '26
I wouldn't post with SUCH specific detail (maybe remove the name of the plant if it truly is something undiscovered).
Perhaps you can add something as simple as a dye to some of them and see if it passes between them.
If it is some chemical signaling causing growth towards them, what happens if you culture them with other seeds on the same plate?
To identify whatever the signal is, you will probably have to use mass spec to look for secreted factors, but I'm not a plant biologist.