Our fellow member, Harold Koopowitz, has done extensive work in the preservation of seeds. Harold, will you give us some direction? Dell ----- Original Message ----- From: "J.E. Shields" <jshields@indy.net> To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Sunday, August 7, 2011 3:25:36 PM Subject: Re: [pbs] Seed freezing I talked with an expert on this several years ago. Some seeds cannot be frozen, of course. The baccate seeds of genera like Clivia, Crinum, Haemanthus, Scadoxus, Hymenocallis, Brunsvigia, Amaryllis, Nerine, and others are recalcitrant (i.e., refuse to go into dormancy) as well as being full of water and hence unfreezable. I was also told (and this was 30 years ago -- maybe things have changed?) that oily seeds like Hippeastrum and its relatives are very hard to preserve long-term. I guess they also do not tolerate freezing. This probably includes genera like Zephyranthes, Habranthus, Sprekelia, Rhodophiala, and even Worsleya. Pity; all the seeds of genera I'm most interested in cannot be preserved by drying or freezing. Jim Shields in Westfield, Indiana U.S.A. At 04:25 PM 8/6/2011 -0400, you wrote: >It is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault located on the Norwegian island >of Spitsbergen. > >You can search for deposited seeds by country of origin on their site at: > >http://www.nordgen.org/sgsv/ ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Lat. 40° 02.8' N, Long. 086° 06.6' W _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/