Almost a forest

I haven't been disappointed - in the last week another two Baobabs have germinated, and one pot in particular is looking rather densely canopied!

One seedling has arrived in one of the pots marked '3' in the propagator, and I found the seed case actually lying on top of the soil next to it. When the seeds sprout it seems that they put down a root, and then push up the stalk with the cotyledon leaves and the seed case still around them, which is shed as they unfurl.

Most of the action however is still in the pot marked '2' that the first seedling germinated in. Four out of the five seeds I planted in the pot have now germinated, and the big cotyledon leaves are making it look quite crowded. In a couple of the seedlings you can just see the first pair of 'true' leaves, which is quite exciting. They are quite hard to photograph at such close range, so I've done a sketch to try and give a clearer picture of what's going on.

I think the next task will be to separate out the seedlings in this pot. As dryland trees I would imagine their roots will go down, rather than out, to search out the deep water reserves that they would survive from in the desert plains of Africa. So whilst I'm not too worried about their roots becoming tightly tangled together at this stage, I am interested to see how deep they are relative to the height of the seedline, and to make sure they have enough room to keep going!