Old seed germinates!!

[vic brown]

My first attempts at growing mexican Pinguicula from seed, about 6 years ago, were fraught with frustration. Seed obtained from seedbanks and dealers invariably failed to germinate. However, I soon discovered that seed from my own plants (almost always hybrid crosses) invariably germinated within a month and usually with a high germination rate, when sown as soon as possible after harvesting.

I confess, I've been guilty on this Forum and elsewhere, of spreading the idea that mexican Ping seed needs to be really fresh in order to germinate well and that it loses it's viability fairly rapidly.

A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me some fresh seed of a P. moranensis form and whilst preparing the soil mix etc. I remembered some seed that had been sitting in my seedbank (a technical term for a Tupperware box in the fridge! :) ). The seed was over two years old, having been harvested in June 2004 and I'd never got around to growing or distributing it. Frankly, I didn't want to donate it to the CPS Seedbank, because of my views on seed freshness! The seed was from selfed flowers of P. moctezumae and P. 'Huahuapan' (a P. moranensis cultivar) and I sowed it on 22nd August, just to see if any would germinate.

Imagine my surprise when the P. moctezumae seed began to germinate in 8 days - this is how the seedlings look now

...and this morning I noticed that the P. 'Huahuapan' 'F2' seed had started to germinate too!!

I do take care with the collection and storage of CP seed; this seed was stored dry in paper envelopes, inside ziplok bags, inside an airtight box at 4C in my fridge. The seed was packed and refrigerated within minutes of harvesting. So, I'm now of the opinion that mexican Ping seed doesn't need to be very fresh in order to be viable, it will keep for several years if stored correctly. I think I'll keep back some seed from crosses I make in the future and try to determine if this is a widespread phenomena and for just how long will mexican Ping seed keep viable.

Vic

[Markus]

Hi Vic,

thank you for sharing your observations. I can only second this.

Recently I obtained a couple of seeds and some of those must have been 2-3 years old. I was told that they also were stored in a refrigerator.

I sowed the seeds and hadn't hopes that any seed would germinate. To my great surprise there were a surprising germination within 1 week only.

But I must admit that I sometimes have problems to germinate fresh seeds so I think there must be something that induces germination.

I sowed some fresh seeds of P. moctezumae a couple of month ago and they germinated quite quickly. Some weeks later I sowed the seeds of the next flower and no germination at all - same for P. colimensis.

I also think that the seed have to be stored cool to keep them fresh so I will be not as careless with my seeds that I don't sow immediately as I used to be...

Cheers,

Markus

[Guest Aidan]

The Sarracenia seed harvest is just beginning and although I currently keep seed sealed and refrigerated and get good rates of germination, I've decided to do it properly this this year. To that end I'm ordering a kilo of silica gel in order to reduce moisture content as far as is practicable. I plan to dry and store all seed with silica-gel in future. A molecular-sieve desiccant would reduce moisture content further but appears harder to come by and more expensive.

[Malifex]

Just a little plug here for the Kew 'mini seed bank' kit, which contains all the bits you need to dry seeds down to the appropriate moisture content (a coloured indicator shows you the status of the seeds).

Remember, it's the drying that promotes longevity, not the low temperature...

[/plug]

Steve

[radmegan]

What type of substrate did you use when planting the ping seeds? staright peat? very damp? i have some week-old P. moranansis seeds I'm scared/excited to plant. Thanks for teh post :)

[vic brown]

I just use my regular Ping media (consists of a mixture of; Seramis/Perlite/gritty sand/Cornish grit/vermiculite/peat/J.I. no2 potting compost/crushed tufa) with a little extra fine peat sprinkled on top, so that there are less holes for the seed to fall down. Mexican Ping seed will germinate on most moist CP substrates, I get stray seedlings popping up in live sphagnum in Nepenthes pots and regular peat/sand mixes. The advantage of using regular Ping mix is that the plants can grow quite large before I need to transplant them.

I keep them slightly damp all the time and don't allow the soil surface to dry out, unlike growing mexican Pings, which I let dry out a little between waterings.

Germination times for mexican Pings vary from 1 - 8 weeks in my experience, don't panic if nothing shows for a few weeks. :)

Vic

[radmegan]

Thanks Vic! I'll be planting them soon- and will keep you posted on the progress ;)

[Joseph Clemens]

Vic,

Thank you for bringing up this topic.

A few years ago I experienced my first attempts to germinate Mexican Pinguicula seed -- they were from commercial sources. They completely failed to germinate, at that time I thought it was most likely due to possible advanced age of the seed. Since then, whenever I manage to produce seed from my own plants I harvest and sow in almost the same motion. This practice has nearly always resulted in a nice crop of seedlings.

More recently, like you, I have seen good germination with seed that was at least 3 months old. The seed were received as a gift, and tidy housekeeper that I am --- NOT, they inadvertently were placed in a dark and very dry location, where they were overlooked for several months. Once I had again located them, I realized how old they must have been by then and my first thought was that they must now be too old to be viable, but I really wanted to grow them, so, despite expecting them to have become too old, I sowed them anyway, and waited, then to my surprise, they germinated as if they had been fresh.

[Vidyut]

This means there's hope for my seeds... will update how it goes.