Posted by Mark
on 7/31/2008, 2:39 pm, in reply to "Re: Hildebrantii"
207.200.116.199
: You probably need to be a bit
: more patient, but after saying that,
: how many seeds do you have and do
: you want to experiment? If so, you
: are on the right track with the
: sandpaper, but I go one step
: farther.
: I am doing this right now with a
: batch of whitelockiis with good
: results, and many times, this
: species will have a lower
: germination because of the hatch
: problem. This comes from Greg
: Holzman and if you are a member of
: TCS, he wrote an article on this in
: the last December issue. What I am
: doing though, is taking my pocket
: knife and cutting just around the
: top and not down into the seed until
: the hatch breaks away in small
: pieces, so the entire top is gone.
: Now, fungus can get in that hole,
: but I am putting the seeds with the
: butt end down into a 4 inch pot
: filled with moist sphagnum moss.
: (the light stuff they use for
: hanging baskets and I use it for
: bare root shipping of cycads) I put
: the pot in a big plastic bag and
: wait. The holes never touch the moss
: so no water gets into the holes, but
: the best part about this is that if
: the seed is ready to sprout, it will
: do so within 3 days. As an example,
: I capped 16 whitelockii seeds and
: put them in the pot and in 3 days,
: 10 out of 16 germinated and have big
: sprouts coming out. The others might
: sprout but they aren't as mature.
: When you cut the tops off, you can
: see that the ones that aren't ready
: don't have a sprout at the tip where
: the ones that are ready have the
: sprout right below the surface. I
: have been doing this for 3 years
: now, and when I first started
: experimenting with this, I took some
: old encephalartos seeds that had
: been sitting in the trays for over a
: year, and capped them and 90% of
: them germinated in 2 days. The
: others were dead and wouldn't sprout
: anyway. Anyway, if the seeds were
: cheap enough to play with half of
: them, try this. If the seeds are
: truly ready, they will come out fast
: and you may find yourself doing it
: to the other half. There is no
: better way to get fast, uniform
: germination.
:
I will try your suggestion. I remember a ways back I asked you for help with "black eye" gratus seeds, and took your suggestion on removing the hatches. It worked out pretty well.
the 'hildas' look like they are pretty much 'good to go' as far as maturity. Got 100 of them, so were not talking a major project, but it is small enough to do in a late afternoon.
On another point/
It seems as though each species has it's distint personality and particular way of germinating. I think it would be cool if someone who has the experience to write about their observations and experience and write a book about how to germinate different species of cycads. Some may feel the information is proprietary, but if they had such a 'book', I'd certainly buy it.
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