In message
Chris Hogg wrote:

On Tue, 21 Oct 2014 18:54:09 +0100, "Christina Websell"
wrote:


"Jeff Layman" wrote in message
...
On 20/10/2014 17:28, Bob Hobden wrote:

I believe they use Hydrogen peroxide to wake up Protea seed, at least
that
is what I was told to do.

There has been some success with it, but the best thing to use is smoke
(as smoke water or paper discs which have been exposed to smoke, rested on
the seed compost, and gently sprayed to allow the smoke to soak into the
compost).

--

Jeff


that's enough, Jeff. If you want to be cruel I'm not allowing it.

It's very unlikely that smoke germination would be appropriate for
Alder, if that's what you think Jeff is suggesting. It's an
evolutionary adaptation by plants exposed to wild-fires. Many South
African and Australian plants respond well. It may be because young
seedlings won't survive a wild-fire, but after fire has swept through,
there's nothing left to burn, and seedlings can get established to the
point at which they stand a chance of surviving the next fire.
Chemicals in the smoke trigger the germinating process.

I've used it myself on a number of occasions to encourage germination
of South African proteaceae (as Jeff said) and SA heathers. Can't say
how successful it was though, because I didn't do an unsmoked test
alongside it.

See http://tinyurl.com/kqzl5jd

This idea of smoke to kill fungi, and maybe ME, is a nasty turn in
this thread. But I workng with a partner in another project, to grow
sequoia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_(genus)

from seeds collected from the magnificent stand at Minsteracres
retreat centre. But the seeds just won't grow. It seems that one of
the tricks (still under investigation) is to used "smoked water" to
simulate the after effects of a forest fire and the signal to the
seeds that now is the time to germinate. And "smoked water" is
available for sale!

Michael Bell



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