Visible embryos
Jane McGary (Sat, 23 Nov 2019 15:35:42 PST)

Visible embryos appear in the flat seeds of a number of members of the
lily family, whether or not the seed is going to germinate soon. The
embryo is generally an oval, darker zone surrounded by the papery
"wing," which facilitates dispersal of the seeds by wind. When cleaning
seeds, you can separate out most of the fertile seeds by placing all the
seeds in a bowl with straight sides, about 3 inches/8 cm deep, and
blowing very gently into them. The seeds without embryos will fly out.
You can do this over a big sheet of paper so you can examine this chaff
for any good seeds that escaped. I didn't spend a great deal of time
cleaning the F. striata seeds that went into the BX/SX, because they
came with a lot of chaff, but you will find an adequate number of
fertile seeds in your share (depending on your idea of "adequate").

Most Fritillaria species are easily cleaned this way, though a few have
very thick seeds where the embryo is hard to distinguish. Lilium and
Cardiocrinum seeds are similar. Lily breeders use a technique called
"embryo rescue" to propagate distant hybrids in which the embryo can't
develop normally, dissecting out the embryo and growing it in a nutrient
solution.

As for required winter chilling in Fritillaria, this probably varies
quite a bit. The F. striata seeds I sowed 2 months ago are just starting
to germinate, but other frit seeds sown at the same time haven't emerged
yet. It hasn't been very cold here this fall; the first frost was only
yesterday. I find most germination in this genus, and some other
summer-dormant genera we grow, takes place about the same time the
mature plants' foliage starts to emerge, which makes sense. The only
species I have self-sowing extensively in the open garden is the
familiar F. meleagris, and the seedling leaves (which are large for the
genus) appear about the time the flowering stalks are starting to elongate.

Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon, USA

On 11/23/2019 2:05 PM, David Pilling wrote:

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