I Tampered with my Yampah

There's a lot of anxiety these days about the perils of nanotechnology. In the case of my yampah roots, I seem to have managed to reduce yields to a comparable scale - any smaller and they would be non-existent.  This may be great for those with very small appetites or trying out low carb diets; as far I'm concerned the calories in, calories out equation is way too far into the negative to be worth bothering with: I'm greedy and I'm lazy.  That said, there does seem to be a trend towards micro-greens and micro-herbs, so it could be that the world is now ready for yet another novel marketing trend: micro-roots.

I rather despaired of said yampah even surviving, so tiny were the food reserves the roots contained.  I kept them stored at room temperature in some vermiculite and gave them no further thought.  In the autumn, during a periodic clear out of plant-associated detritus, I rediscovered them, lodged beneath an item of furniture.  To my surprise, I could see that tiny buds had appeared at the top of the marginally less tiny roots.  Curiosity piqued, I checked for signs of further bud development over a period of several weeks.  There was no discernible change in size or shape of the buds in what seemed to be yet another false dawn on Planet Periderida.

I seriously debated whether I should chuck them unceremoniously into the compost bucket and forget all about this queen of prairie provender.

In the end, I bunged them in the fridge. Vernalise or die! I cried, as I consigned them to the chilly last chance saloon for an unspecified period.  

I'm not sure whether my imprecations or an extended sojourn at 4C shocked them into growth, but something did.  A few months later, a polite (but firm) request was made that I remove some unidentified festering objects from the bottom of the fridge; among them was the yampah time capsule.  I immediately noticed thin, spidery radial roots emerging from just below the now plump and swelling buds.  I potted them on with some alacrity and while not exactly romping away, they seem to be developing at a faster rate than they did last year.  I tampered with my yampah and some good came out of it - this must surely be classified as a success of sorts.

They have a feathery, graceful ephemerality about them which doesn't exactly inspire confidence in their productivity, but I'm prepared to give them a second go - I'm a lachrymose old softy when it comes down to it.