Last spring’s trip to the Santa Ysabel Preserve introduced me to chaparral whitethorn in full bloom. This plant, Ceanothus leucodermis, has a reputation for being a touchy garden subject. But seeing its pale blue flowers set off against a plant with glowing white bark made me want to see if I might be able to grow it where I live, two thousand feet lower in elevation and much nearer the coast.
I was intrigued when the Theodore Payne seed listing offered it. One seed packet might give me several plants to try for not too much expense. Maybe one of the plants would end up in the spot in the garden that would make it happy.
The first challenge you face when a packet of seeds arrive is to get them to germinate. I was afraid that a plant that’s hard to grow might also be difficult to germinate, so I went to Dara Emory’s handy resource, Seed Propagation of California Native Plants for assistance. There she recommends two special treatments for the seed: boiling water treatment, followed by 1–3 months of stratification. But there was a sentence that made the process sound easier than that: “Hot water only may give satisfactory germination.”
The tinkerer in me took that as an opportunity to conduct another little garden experiment. I divided the seeds into three lots. Most went right back into the packet they came it–It was way too many seeds for me to contemplate dealing with, even if the germination rate was spotty.
I poured a small quantity of rapidly boiling water on the other two seed batches. Dousing with boiling water ordinarily would kill many living things. The first time you do it with seeds, it’s an act that you carry out trusting those who went before you, even as the act itself seems counterintuitive and reckless.
The ceanothus seeds made strange crackling noises when the hot water hit. They have incredibly hard seed coverings, so the crackling was the sound of the seed coats being breached. I let the water cool, and then placed most of the experimental subjects in moist peat moss, and wrapped them up in a ziploc bag for some hibernation in the veggie crisper drawer of the fridge. I saved out nine seeds which escaped the refrigerator treatment. Those went straight into seedling mix in pots that I kept watered on the floor of my unheated greenhouse, which is pretty close to being placed in a a bright spot outdoors.
That was August 1, and within 3 weeks I was beginning to see sprouting seeds. Considering that I could probably make space for three or so plants, this definitely constituted “satisfactory germination.”
I guess I was so happy with the seeds that didn’t receive cold treatment that I forgot about the seeds in the fridge. When I finally checked on them a month ago practically every seed had sprouted and was showing long green seed leaves reaching for a sun that didn’t exist in the refrigerator.
Now with all these seedlings I’m feeling like I’m running a botanical puppy mill. What will I do with all these plants? Of course, I doubt all of them will survive. (What culture was it where children were only named after they had reached their first birthday?) But there will be a few more plants than I’ll need.
Well, I suppose I could donate the spares to next year’s native plant society’s sale–but that’s not until October of 2010. And I could see if any of the members might be interested in swapping for some of their own spare plants hat I’d be interested in…
Here are a few mostly unrelated things I’ve been storing up.
Shopping for Pumpkins
McLean, Virginia photo by Joel Sternfeld
First off, I wanted to share this fun(?) photo that’s only a few days late for Canadian Thanksgiving or a couple weeks early for the US holiday. (Be sure to click it to enlarge it to get the full effect.) The image is “McLean, Virginia (1978)” by photographer Joel Sternfeld. It’s his best-known photo and the cover to one of the editions of his book, American Prospects.
A big part of photography can be being in the right place at the right time. But then you have to know when to snap the shutter. Sternfeld nailed this one!
Ornamental Grasses
Grasses have been used as lawn materials for centuries, but the last couple decades have seen an explosion in the use of ornamental grasses that you don’t attack with lawnmowers. The Canadian firm, Bluestem Nursery, has assembled one of the better brief guides to dozens of commonly-used ornamental grasses. When does a grass bloom? How much water does it need? How large does it get? Just take a look at the great summary. Click on the plant name for photos and a more detailed description. It doesn’t have every plant you’ll run into in a seed catalog, but it has plenty of the hardier species.
Penstemons from Seed
A few weeks ago I was planning to sow seeds of a couple species of penstemon. Some of the species in the genus require a cold snap to germinate, others require light, while some respond to a fairly elaborate string of temperature changes. And some just spring to life after you sprinkle them in some soil and water them in. I had no idea what kind of treatment my species required until I went trawling the web. That was when I ran across Jim Swayne’s penstemon seed germination methodology pages.
There you’ll find several hundred penstemon species listed, along with brief germination notes on how you make the little seeds come to life. (For example, one of the more elaborate routines, for P. hartwegii, goes something like: “Sow fresh seed @ 70ºF (21ºC), sow stored seed under thin cover 8 wks @ 40ºF (4ºC), move to 50ºF (10ºC) under light; if no germ. in 4 wks, move to 60ºF (16ºC).” Fortunately my two species were closer to the “just add water” category.)
An Election Video You Haven’t Seen
Leaving the garden, I wanted share this clip in recognition of the elections just concluded. It may be the last election footage you’ll need to watch this season: a promo for Please Vote for Me, a Danish documentary from 2007 on an election for Class Monitor for a third grade class in Wuhan, China. It’s a little Sesame Street in parts, but it’s got its Lord of the Flies moments as well.
The pointleaf manzanita seeds I ordered ended up being from one of the many plant species (not only manzanitas) that depend on fire to perpetuate their species. In nature, a brisk fire might wipe out many of the existing plants, but the fire also creates an opportunity for the seedbank to come to life. Without the necessary fire, the seeds just lie on the ground–that’s if they don’t get eaten by critters.
The subjects in this experiment exhibit really really hard shells that protect the embryo inside. Getting word from a hospitable outside world to the swaddled seed germ is the challenge. The seed packet I received recommended soaking them in sulfuric acid for six to fifteen hours. That’s one way to break through the seed coat to get moisture and nutrients inside.
Doing research on similar manzanitas, some sites recommended scratching the seed coat, making sure not to damage the germ inside. Some papers recommended building a four-inch pile of combustibles above the seeds and setting the pile on fire. And yet another recommendation was to boil the seeds for fifteen to thirty seconds (one source) or one to two minutes (another source).
No matter which of the above methods was tried, the seeds also required cold-stratification to convince them that they had endured a near-freezing winter and could begin growth. Which seed-torture method to try was the question.
Sulfuric acid: Where can a non-chemist get it easily? And it sounded a tad dangerous.
Scratching the seed coat (sometimes called scarification): Tedious for more than a couple seeds, and how could I be sure I didn’t scratch off too much? Or not enough?
Building a fire over the seeds? This method also sounded dangerous, but potentially fun.
Boiling the seeds (a variant on scarifying seeds): Sounded safer than acid or fire, but do you go for fifteen seconds or two minutes? Wouldn’t too long kill off the little embryos?
I think that temperamentally I’m part mad scientist. I thought an experiment to test out all the recommended methods might be instructive–and at least a little entertaining.
Acid bottle
Sulfuric acid soak
I found some weak sulfuric acid in a little squeeze bottle at a pool supply store. At a concentration of less than 1%, it was meant for testing water, not for playing with the acid balance. Pretty weak excuse for acid, but worth a try. I soaked some seeds for 18 hours overnight, adding a little time to the end because the stuff was so dilute. (A day after doing this I encountered an old bottle of drain cleaner in the garage, something labeled sulfuric acid. I’ll try another soak with the real stuff later on.)
Scratching the seed coat
The next method was to scratch the seed coat. I used a steel file to break the seed coat and a pair of pliers to hold the seed. I scraped varying amounts off the seed coat, from a moderate amount to a fairly aggressive amount. This was hard, slow, delicate work–way more difficult than I thought it would be.
After the burn
I said earlier that building a little fire might be fun. It was, though I smelled like smoke for hours afterward. The flames burned brightly with the aid of a fireplace lighter, then the embers hung around for a good ten more minutes or more.
Somehow this approach seemed to make the most sense to me. If the plants rely on heat, this solution would provide it. If they rely instead on some secret ingredient that emanates from burnt wood, this method would give them that. And if the burning helps break through the hard seed coat, this method could do that, too.
It goes without saying: You need to use a non-flammable pot to do this!
Boiling the seeds
And my last method was boiling the seeds. I brought water to a boil, threw in a few seeds, and picked a forty-five second time period to leave them on the heat. The boiling seemed to soften the seed coating, and I tried to pull off what I could.
No proper scientific experiment is complete without a control group, so there were some additional seeds that I tortured in no way. I was running out of seeds pretty quickly.
Drawer with pots of seeds
Each of the groups of seed were then potted up, labeled, watered, covered with a bag, and then put in the low veggie drawer next to where I store the film for my cameras. Now I keep them moist–not wet–and wait for two months. At the end of November I’ll take the pots out and move them to my unheated greenhouse or maybe a warm windowsill, for temperatures higher than in the fridge. After their various tortures and a proper period of stratifying, maybe I’ll be crowded with so many manzanitas that I can give them away to everyone I know in the spring. Or not.
