In article .com, Ferd Farkel wrote:
On Sep 27, 8:42 am, Buddy why.wood.yew@bother wrote:
here's Malcolm Manners's last post -: Hi folks, I teach an introductory
plant science course to college
freshmen, and one of the labs that they do is various forms of
scarification of hard seeds (hot water, acid, physical abrasion, etc.).
We've always used Albizia julibrissin, with excellent success. But
this year, the seed weevils have destroyed nearly all the Albizia seeds
on the local trees -- good, perhaps, from the standpoint of slowing it
as an invasive weed, but also harmful to my lab. So I'm in search of
another source -- a different species would be fine -- of seeds that I
could purchase. Are any of you aware of a USA commercial source of some
fairly large-seeded hard seed species in lots of around a pound or two?

I understand that Lupinus (lupines) are hard seeds that sometimes
require scarification. They grow wild in New England and perhaps
they were serve your needs.

Western lupines need fire to germinate.

Do they *need* fire, or just heat? On the other hand, maybe it's just
the smoke.

Many Australian native species were said to "need fire" to germinate,
and they certainly come up thickly following a bush fire; but research
in fairly recent years has shown that it's the chemicals in the smoke
rather than fire _per se_ that stimulate germination.

For small scale propagation people are now using smoked water with
good effect. http://www.cpbr.gov.au/PROPGATE/latest.htm

For detail on effects on species (not all species respond well) and
methods of application:
http://asgap.org.au/APOL2/jun96-6.html

There's plenty more stuff out there (just google "smoke seed
germination site:.au" [without the quotes] for example) but if you
prefer hard copy, seek out of one the seminal papers, such as:

Dixon K.W, Roche S and Pate J.S (1995). The promotive effect of smoke
derived from burnt native vegetation on seed germination of Western
Australian plants. _Oecologia_ 101: 185-192


Cheers, Phred.

--
LID