Ok then Kim I have some clean seeds here in OZ, we are on the end of Spring, how would you approach them please
By 'end of spring", are you saying it is too late to plant them now? If it is, then treat and store them. If you’re going to plant them now, just plant them.
No Kim, sorry for misleading you, in my mind, I “thought” I had to stratify all seeds for germination prior to planting.
You didn’t “mislead” me. Some you may actually need to stratify, such as very arctic hardy species or very hardy moderns/OGRs. For more evergreen, continuous flowering types, very little, if any should be needed. Ralph Moore’s theory was the less stratification given/needed, the more ever flowering the seedling. If the genes don’t require cold to germinate, the plant should be more warm weather type, hence probably more repeat to continuous flowering. Also, he did not hold over flats from one year to the next. He theorized if it required two years or longer to germinate, those seedlings were more likely to be once flowering. True or not, who knows? It seems logical to me. I can report that seeds from minis and mini crosses do not appear to require any stratification as many germinate quickly and grow vigorously in my experience. You normally don’t consider minis all that arctic hardy and they do repeat heavily/continuously. I wouldn’t worry about it. You could treat this as a test.
Your a gem Kim, Sorry to monopolize this thread for a couple of answers from Kim.
While we are on the subject. Have anyone experimented with using concentrated sulphuric acid to degrade the seed coat of rose seeds.
There’s no need to resort to scarification or degradation of the pericarps of rose seeds, they are plenty able to absorb water fresh out of the hip.
Keep them clean from the outset (no dirt), soak them well in very cold water (one day, maybe two days for very big seeds) and keep them moist and very cold for the duration of stratification. Warm them to 48 - 55 degrees F and, if they can germinate, they will germinate. Rinse and repeat as needed.
Personally, I’d stay away from sulfuric acid. We have it in the lab (for reasons not associated with germination). You have to be careful how you store it, what you store it with and how you work with it.
I don’t let any of the student workers use it. (And, generally I don’t let the graduate students/visiting scientist use it either.) If any of them need a ‘lesser strength’ of that particular acid, then I’ll dilute it out for them.
The most scarification the rose seeds get (in our program) is from the blades of the blender. If we only have 1 or 2 hips from a particular cross, then we’ll extract the seeds by hand. Otherwise, they get thrown into the blender with some water.