Not only did the peace lily produce seeds: the seeds germinated, and now I have a number of ever so small peace lily seedlings.
On March 2nd I sowed some seeds on a wet paper towel in a petri dish that sat in the windowsill.
On March 29th some of the seeds seemed to have germinated (see first photo — can you spot the tiny roots?) and the germinated seeds were transferred to small pots that were kept in a “greenhouse” made from a plastic bag to avoid dehydration.
The second photo was taken today (April 20th) and shows a couple of seedlings that have developed their first leaf. Match for scale.
This is a project that has called for patience:
The period from pollination to seeds took 4-5 months. Then it took roughly 1 month for the seeds to germinate, and 3 weeks later the seedlings have just a tiny leaf each. Things can still go wrong, but I'm pretty confident that I will end up having several mature peace lilly plants grown from seeds.
Meanwhile, I have cross-pollinated two peace lily plants. One was the plant I've had for 10+ years. The other was a “miniature” plant I bought last summer, that was meant to sit on the very narrow windowsill in my bathroom. I was naive enough to hope that some gardener had developed a miniature cultivar of the peace lily, but I was fooled: the plant was just a baby plant of something that has now grown into a mature peace lily plant. Latipac be damned!
Now I hope that the two plants are unrelated, and not just perpetuated clones, so that the cross-pollination introduces some genetic variability. Perhaps I am wiser at the end of 2024.