Anyone has suggestions on how I can encourage my chaya trees to form seeds?
I have 5 varieties - 3 with huge leaves that havent flowered yet, not sure they will, and 2 with smaller leaves that flower reliably every year but flowers fall off.
Anything I can do to get the non- flowering varieties to flower- mentor grafting on a flowering variety perhaps? Crossing with a relative?
Hello Tanja,
I did some research about Chaya seeds. This is what I found:
Propagation is normally by woody stem cuttings about 6-12 inches long, as seeds are produced only rarely.
There are four well known cultivars, ‘Picuda’, ‘Estrella’, ‘Chayamansa’, and ‘Redonda’. Cultivars ‘Estrella’, ‘Redonda’, and ‘Chayamansa’ cannot produce seeds or fruit due to unviable pollen, while cultivar ‘Picuda’ and other cultivars can. These cultivars do not have many urticating hairs compared to other cultivars and the wild type of the species, therefore they are more present in culinary use.
Picuda (Cnidoscolus aconitofolius ‘Picuda’)
This type has deeply-lobed leaves with five to nine toothed lobes. This cultivar produces seeds…
Propagation : cuttings (domesticated strains will sometimes flower but rarely set seed)
Flowers are small and white and can be either male or female. Only rarely do seed pods of 1″ in length emerge from the pollinated female flowers, and the seeds produced will not usually grow.
Cultivated varieties of Chaya tree spinach do not generally produce seeds.
The male and female flowers bloom from a long stem that emerges from in between the leaves. After the flowers are pollinated, a larger, round green seed pod will emerge.
It sounds like you either need a wild Chaya plant or the Picuda cultivar.
When you finally do get some seeds, you will have to figure out how to get them to germinate.
I hope this was helpful.
Jerry Irving