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: > > The key thing is that you can see if the seed is going to germinate > soon by the presence of a visible embryo. You can watch the embryo > develop. No visible embryo, no germination soon. > > Its called "morphophysiological dormancy". > _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…