As shared in an earlier post a few weeks back, I had not exactly finished with the identity of this herb yet. Although I had identified it as Blechum pyramidatum (Green Shrimp Plant), there was still some uncertainties. Firstly, the pictures seen so far from several reputable websites were all showed green floral bracts while the local version had dark maroon edge floral bracts. Secondly, description of the capsule (fruit) seemed to indicate that it had only 2 seeds per capsule but my recent observation showed up around 6 seeds in each well-developed capsule.

Last Sunday, I managed to eventually collect some seeds from the pot of plant that I brought home in October. My first attempt to isolate the seeds a month back was not successful as I had underestimate it explosive seed dispersion mechanism. Before I knew, the tiny seeds were gone in all direction. I waited for a few weeks for another batch of capsules to mature. In this second attempt, I released the seeds inside a small container and it worked.

The fruits were in the form of capsules of about 10 millimetres (mm) long. Each matured capsule was being wrapped around with the remains of dried and hairy sepals of a similar length. The seed was about 2 mm long. The length of the capsule from my plant seemed to be much longer than that showed in the University of Guam website, the only website that I managed to find a picture of the capsule. Interestingly, the number of seeds per capsule was indicated as 4 to 6.

It was uncertain whether the seeds are viable at this point since I had yet to try germinating them. So, I could not be very certain that I got the herb’s name correct at this point.