Questions about seeds from hot and dry summer areas
Lauw de Jager (Fri, 20 Jun 2003 01:37:43 PDT)
Dear John and all,
There are some exceptions, notably for woodland species such as
Cyclamen and Galanthus. They do much better when sown immediately when
seed pods are mature, covered with a light of mulch and only very
slightly moist. It could be that complete drying of these seeds would
delay germination. In fact at the moment we are sowing all our Cyclamen.
All other mediterranean climat species are sown in august and are
watered during the last week of that month (the moment when the natural
rainstorms tend to occur here. South african species germinate
immedately, Californian and 'continental' species (mainly asian) emerge
during the winter.
Kind regards
John Lonsdale wrote:
so I am asking myself why I continue to water pots
of such seeds during the summer. Genera in question would include
Crocus,
geophytic iris, Cyclamen and a host of other 'Mediterranean' bulbs. I
mentioned before that I have seen some seed of some of these bulbs rot
during the summer, when I have kept them moist, and temperatures are
consistently in the 80s and 90sF. I am tempted to stop watering
ungerminated seeds of these bulbs around now, and restart in
mid-September.
--
Lauw de Jager
BULB'ARGENCE, 30300 Fourques, France
Site: http://www.bulbargence.com/