sowing Moraea seeds

Michael Mace michaelcmace@gmail.com
Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:18:28 PST
Ina, one more thought on your Moraea seeds: If you're worried about them
staying viable, it wouldn't hurt to put them in a sealed plastic bag in the
refrigerator (not the freezer).  Here in my part of California I wouldn't
bother with that for a single season. (In fact, I've had some Moraea and
other South African bulbs sprout from decade-old seeds stored neglectfully
in the garage. You heard me right, Moraea speciosa seed from the era of Bill
Clinton is still viable.)  But the relative humidity here is quite low.  The
air is a tad more moist in Auckland in summer, and if you use the
refrigerator that'll protect the seeds.

But as I said, I doubt you need to do that to store them for a single
season.

By the way, which species did you get?

I also wanted to double-plus endorse Lee's suggestion that we get more
cultivation information onto the wiki.  It's the web's leading resource to
get basic information on bulb species, but I'd love to see it also become
the best source for cultural information.  So many times there are little
tricks and techniques we've found to make something germinate, or grow
particularly well, but unless we document them someplace they won't be
remembered.

Even information on what *doesn't* work can be helpful.

To give you an example of how that can work, check out the wiki entry for
Calochortus macrocarpus, here:
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…
acrocarpus

The Calochortus Society gave us permission to reproduce their cultural
advice, so I put it into a little expanding box.  Look for the link
"cultural information" at the bottom of the entry for C. macrocarpus.  Click
on it to read the cultural info.

How cool would it be to have a note like that for every species?

Adding information to the wiki is intimidating for some people, so here's an
offer.  If you want to write up the cultural information for a species (or
for a hundred species), but don't want to post it yourself, send it to me
and I'll post it.

Best,

Mike
San Jose, CA




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