I have tried twice to grow R. glauca seeds without much luck. I have gotten a few seeds out of countless numbers. Is their any special treatment besides the normal cold storage that is needed with this one?
Hi Adam,
I’ve been doing germination experiments with it for years here trying different warm startification durations and temperatures. Warm startification does help some, but it doesn’t increase the overall germination percent that great. I’ve been using up to a 12 week warm startification before a 12 week cold stratification. One year I gave some of my extra seeds to a friend and he got amazing germination!!! I asked him what he did to them and he didn’t remember. I think he left the seeds, which were moist, in the lab for much of the winter and then gave them some cold stratification and that did it. I should probably try an even longer warm stratification period.
Good luck!!! No wonder people keep the seeds of this species muliple years. It is interesting to see it reseed pretty well for some people in their gardens.
Sincerely,
David
I will try warm stratification next time. Thanks for the advice.
I wonder how these people gardens are different from other peoples or how the garden practices are different? Maybe finding out is a possible key to the answer?
I had a lot of Glauca seeds with different crosses and got about 150 seedlings which is more than I needed. No warm stratification and the normal three months cold stratification. Good luck. I still have the seeds and will probably have too many seedlings again.
Patrick
So what kind of crosses did you do with R. glauca. I myself have just recently crossed it with R. woodsii, a natural hybrid of R. arkansas, and Queen Elizabeth. Hopeing some of these seeds set and then I just got to figure out how to get them to sprout.
I crossed R. Glauca with R. Fedtschenkoana, Frontenac and Corylus. Only had one seedling from the Corylus cross because I did not have many seeds. If mine have not germinated in three months I take them out at night and put them back in the fridge in daytime until they start germinating.
Patrick
I pollinated R.glauca with the mini Hope and Joy and also tryed some of Henry’s Rugelda X R15 on it. I didn’t realize that it had a low germination rate. I was also trying to use its pollen on Baby Love but it seems that you would need a lot of flowers to get much pollen from glauca.
Sharon Baby Love is a much better pollen parent. It i very easy to work with as a pollen parent but you will probably be extremely disappointed with it as a seed parent. I was planning the same cross but in reverse.
At least for me R. glauca seems to have plenty of pollen you just have to shake it a little more in it container to get it to release from the dry stamens. But maybe I got a different clone than you do.
I’ve gotten tons of pollen from the few flowers that have bloomed so far on R. glauca. Never had a seed sprout from it yet, but last week I did find one tiny seedling growing under the main bush!
Years ago I lived next to someone who had a hedge of R. glauca. Every Spring, its seeds would germinate thick as grass underneath it without any prompting. These obviously came from hips that simply dropped immediately underneath the parent plant and in that climate (Zone 6) they were exposed to multiple hard freeze events over the course of the Winter. Has anyone tried freezing R. glauca seeds to break dormancy?
Paul that is definitely an interesting thought. R. glauca is native to very cold conditions. So it might work.