Germinating Cardiocrinum giganteum
Paul Tyerman (Tue, 07 Sep 2004 05:56:21 PDT)

At 11:46 6/09/04, you wrote:

Steve,

It is currently early spring here, so they had a natural cold treatment.
<grin> I harvested them and sowed them within 24 hours from memory.....
I'll have to check my records to see exactly when that was. I gave them
just the same as I do for any other seed, no special treatment for them in
particular. They are in a shaded area that is dedicated to my pots of seeds.

I sowed my first bulb seeds in '99....... now it is totally out of hand and
I generally sow a couple of hundred pots a year, which you'd realise was a
BIG mistake if you saw how small my garden is and how much everything is
already packed into it!! Still, not as bad as some people I heard of,
although they are usually the people who have a nursery or acreage or
something!! LOL

OK, I just went and checked. I sowed the seed in June as this year for
some reason the seed pods on the Cardiocrinum took AGES to mature. I leave
them on the plant until the pod actually starts to split naturally. This
happened this year in early June and I pretty much sowed the seed within
the next couple of days as I mentioned above.

To be honest I wasn't really expecting them to germinate until next spring
as I think the other ones that I had germinate from the older seed took a
full year + to germinate..... I certainly wasn't expecting just a few
months, but that is definitely the case. A very good germination rate too
by the look of it as the pot is pretty much packed with shoots.

So if you're getting very fresh seed just go ahead and plant it (or some of
it outside and try cold treatment for others etc.). Good luck!!

Cheers.

Paul Tyerman
Canberra, Australia. USDA equivalent - Zone 8/9
Where it is raining!!!!!!!! Yeah!! We've had more rain (around 95mm) in
the last 2 weeks than we've had in the last 7 months put together, and Oh
Boy is it overdue. Feels like there might be hope after all. Hopefully it
keeps up a bit longer yet though. You can just about hear the plants
rejoicing! <grin>