Hello everyone! I am experimenting with seedgrowing several common and not-so-common caudiciform plants.
I have received 5 Ipomena Bullata seeds from Koehres Kakteen…and I’m posting here to hopefully gather some insight and maybe (if I am successful in getting them germinated and grown) leave this thread as a do/dont-do for future Ipomena Bullata growers.
Seeds: I’m sorry I didn’t take a picture straight out the bag. They’re large (maybe the size of orange seeds) and covered with tufts of white fluff. After 24 hours of soaking I took them out to investigate, intending to scarify the seedcoat for water penetration, only to find that they’re still quite hard. To the point that I could not penetrate the seed coat with a scalpel unless I wanted to run the risk of slicing through the seed or my finger! Not sure how old the seeds are—from the hardness I’m guessing on the older side.
I took one seed out and sanded one side gently with medium-grit sandpaper to remove the hard outer layer. And it did come off—however the lobes of carbohydrate inside were also hard. So after scraping the seeds gently with my scalpel to remove most of the white tufts,
I decided to soak the other four seeds in a solution of 1% H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) for half an hour then return the seeds to soaking.
That’s where we stand for now. In photo, the seed on the left is the one that I sanded. Any advice or comments are very much appreciated!
by itsnotfailure
1 Comment
Update: I left the seeds soaking overnight, bringing the total soak time to about 30 hours…six hours after scarification, the one seed that had been sanded was about double the size from water retention. On that basis I decided to scarify the other four seeds. Sandpaper was not easy as the seedcoat was still very hard. I used a toenail clipper to snip into the edges on both sides of the remaining seeds, then back to the water to absorb.