Hyphaene petersiana

[steve 9atx]

All

Sorry for the redundancy: I posted this question on the old board and didn't print out the feedback.  Just received my seeds.  Any advice?

Steve

[Tad]

no experience with petersiana, but with coriacea I soaked them for 3 days and scrubbed the dried pulp remnants off, planted them in deep tree cones, (stuewe and sons "the deep one") and parked them at the edge of the shade house where they get a dose of intense heat, took a while but had good luck with them.

[Matt in SD]

I've germinated H petersiana and H thebaica.  I'm not expert at germinating seeds, but with Hyphaene I've had 100% success.  In bose cases I soaked them for ~2-3 weeks.  At some point after soaking, the outer husk gets a bit softened and I removed it (with a serrated "ginsu" type knife).  So it was probably ~1 week, reomoved the fruit/pulp, then soaked another 2 weeks or so changing the water every day.  I soaked them until the water was still basically clear after 24 hours of soaking (it turns brown initially).  

Then I put them in moist coco-peat in an incuabator at ~90F.  In all cases the seeds germinated within 1-2 weeks.

I recommend potting them into a ~12" tall, narrow container.  Then after the 2nd or 3rd leaf, move them to a deeper, fatter container.  This way you know there will be room for the roots to go down from where the radicle stops.  H petersiana seemed to go deeper than H thebaica for me.

Matt