Storing cyclamen seeds
John T Lonsdale (Sat, 22 May 2010 13:37:58 PDT)

Hi Diane,

I occasionally get my own purpurascens seeds, but not many or often. Most
of my plants are in the garden. Seeds have also come from a variety of
sources in Europe - Jan Bravenboer especially, also the CS and a couple of
good friends who know their cyclamen very well and how to take care of
seeds. I don't see much difference between them, other than some batches of
CS purpurascens seed never germinate at all. You have hit the nail on the
head - however controlled your experiments are, it is impossible to control
what happened before you got the seed and this may be a major factor
impacting your results.

Seed set on many species has been pretty good this last season and some,
like intaminatum under glass, are already ripe.

Best,

J.

John T Lonsdale PhD
407 Edgewood Drive,
Exton, Pennsylvania 19341, USA

Home: 610 594 9232
Cell: 484 678 9856
Fax: 315 571 9232

Visit "Edgewood" - The Lonsdale Garden at http://www.edgewoodgardens.net/

USDA Zone 6b

-----Original Message-----
From: pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]
On Behalf Of Diane Whitehead
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2010 4:16 PM
To: Pacific Bulb Society
Subject: Re: [pbs] Storing cyclamen seeds

John reports no difference in germination time for all his cyclamen
species, including purpurascens, and I wonder whether he is sowing his
own purpurascens seeds and has developed a strain that germinates
quickly.

My Cyclamen Society purpurascens seeds sown in mid-October under the
four different conditions germinated from November 8 to January 9.

The CS seeds from all the donors are put together, so it is difficult
to know how they have been treated prior to my receiving them.

I have not had any seeds from my own plants, so haven't been able to
germinate fresh seeds. Christopher Grey-Wilson wrote that
purpurascens does not set seeds readily, particularly if grown in
pots. Do you get many seeds, John?

Diane

On 22-May-10, at 12:15 PM, John T Lonsdale wrote: