Kava Botany When does a plant start displaying identifiable characteristics?

[FYS]

I have several plants that I've been growing for varying lengths of time as do some friends of mine. As they are now I am unable to ID them. I think they just aren't developed enough to show many distinguishing characteristics.

For others that are growing what is your soil mix and what kind of amendments and top dressings do you use if any? How often do you water? Have any tips or tricks? What about companion plants? I'm sure I can think of a few more questions as time goes on. I know I'm forgetting a couple I wanted to ask when I started writing this but...

I guess this can be general growing and propagation thread as well. Bula!

 

[Alia]

After 3 months good growth you should see unique, specific morphological characteristics to determine cultivar.
You can link to Hawaiian 'Awa, Views of an Ethnobotanical Treasure usually you can just google it and find it.
There is a chapter about growing 'awa, kava, sakau, ava entitled 'Awa Production.
You have any photos you can share?
Basically- very well drained, slightly acidic soil...like if you use Sunshine # 4, I'd still add 30% perlite.
Lots of food...liquid foliar feed. Top dress== Osmocote 13-13-13 w/ trace.
Another source is Pacific Kava, A Producer's Guide might still be link-able via Secretariat of the Pacific Community 2001.

 

[kasa_balavu]

@sɥɐʞɐs couldn't get it to survive to maturity in California. What state and zone are you in, if you don't mind sharing?

 

[FYS]

@sɥɐʞɐs couldn't get it to survive to maturity in California. What state and zone are you in, if you don't mind sharing?

I'm in SE USA but others in my gardening group have it growing well in N. Ga, S. Ga, SoCal, N. Fl, Hawaii, E. Texas, and W. Texas. I think that's right.

After 3 months good growth you should see unique, specific morphological characteristics to determine cultivar.
You can link to Hawaiian 'Awa, Views of an Ethnobotanical Treasure usually you can just google it and find it.
There is a chapter about growing 'awa, kava, sakau, ava entitled 'Awa Production.
You have any photos you can share?
Basically- very well drained, slightly acidic soil...like if you use Sunshine # 4, I'd still add 30% perlite.
Lots of food...liquid foliar feed. Top dress== Osmocote 13-13-13 w/ trace.
Another source is Pacific Kava, A Producer's Guide might still be link-able via Secretariat of the Pacific Community 2001.

I'll go look for those books right now. Thanks. Good to know about the soil. Seems what I am using should be good then. I have mine in a modified version of the soil mix as I use for my cacti which drains very fast but with a few amendments that aren't in my standard cacti mix. Also have some L. baccilius, mycorrhizae, mushroom metabolites, and some other beneficials in there. I don't feed salts or bottles nutes; mostly ferments/teas(karanja, kelp, neem meal, aloe, coconut, etc) When you say slightly acidic what ph are we looking at?

Also, I was reading through Plants from Test Tubes - An Introduction to Micro-propagation and found this which I thought was interesting and wonder if it could be applied here:

One common source of cells for cell suspension is from friable (crumbly) callus, although specific cells, such as from leaf mesophyll (the thin, soft tissue between the upper and lower epidermis of the leaf), are also grown in suspension. Cells in suspension can form embryoids (somatic embryos) in the process of somatic (non-sexual) embryogenesis. Embryos may multiply and/or be induced to form plantlets in the process of morphogenesis. They may also be artificially coated with a “seed coat” for the production of synthetic seeds. Many hybrid plants produce embryos that do not mature to viable seeds. These embryos can be “rescued,” removed from the seed in an immature stage, and then grown in culture. Suspension cultures have been enhanced by new methods that can continuously introduce fresh medium into the suspension culture, thereby enabling the production of thousands of cells or embryos in a single container with a minimum of manual transfer. This is one way that tissue culture can compete with the plentiful seed production in nature. Interest in the tissue culturing of anthers or pollen to obtain haploid clones (plants composed of cells with half the normal number of chromosomes of vegetative cells) is spurred by the practical applications of such haploid cultures. Haploid ( n ) plants are sterile, but if the chromosomes duplicate, either spontaneously or by induction, the plants will be diploid (2n), which is normal for the vegetative state, and their progeny will be true to form. By conventional means, it takes several generations of inbreeding to obtain a pure line; therefore, plant breeders are very interested in anther culture.

 

[kasa_balavu]

Thanks for sharing those pics. They look pretty good, but I have bad news regarding some of them. The following are False Kava (Piper Auritum):
V1b, V2, H1-H12

 

[kasa_balavu]

Also, I was reading through Plants from Test Tubes - An Introduction to Micro-propagation and found this which I thought was interesting and wonder if it could be applied here:

I'm sure if that were possible with kava, they'd have developed that method rather than the tissue culture method that is currently used:
https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/BIO-4.pdf
https://www.publish.csiro.au/sp/pdf/sp08006
Still, that looks really interesting; I wonder how well it works with other sterile plants.

 

[FYS]

Well, that's a shame. That's weird on the Vanuatu's because they all came from the same person there so I would have assumed it would have been all or nothing on those.

Guess its time to get busy cloning the ones that are P. methysticum!

Thanks for those links. Very interesting indeed. I'm going to dig into that a bit more.

 

[Alia]

Well, that's a shame. That's weird on the Vanuatu's because they all came from the same person there so I would have assumed it would have been all or nothing on those.

Guess its time to get busy cloning the ones that are P. methysticum!

Thanks for those links. Very interesting indeed. I'm going to dig into that a bit more.

Yes, I'd concur with what kasa_balavu said regarding the "False Kava" it's all in the midrib.
The kava plants you do have are very healthy looking .
I am sure by now you must have located the Hawai'i 'Awa book on-line so check out page 71.
It is ironic that now and at least once in the past a Lab in Florida is doing contract tissue culture
of kava for folks in the Pacific community!