Fresh seed just arrived from Australia!

[Rickybobby]

Finally today fresh syagrus romanzoffiana seed arrived from my friend @sandgroper

with an awesome flag and letter! Thanks again Dave and I will do posts on germination updates!

[sandgroper]

Glad they got there safely mate!

[Rickybobby]

[Rickybobby]

Quite the gooey but smells not bad process! This is going to take a while!

[Rickybobby]

So @sandgroper am I supposed to clean the flesh off? All the fuss a few weeks back I can’t remember. I have started anyway

[GottmitAlex]

14 minutes ago, Rickybobby said:

So @sandgroper am I supposed to clean the flesh off? All the fuss a few weeks back I can’t remember. I have started anyway

Congrats!!

Yup.

Rub it against the pavement/cement. That's what my daughter and I did to 72 queen seeds early last year. Most of them germinated.

 

 

 

[Tyrone]

Soak em in water for a couple of days. That will loosen off the fruit.

[Rickybobby]

Ok everyone thanks for the reminder. Ok I’m doing all of the above. I used a knife to remove some fruit while I was cooking dinner. And I have soaked the rest in water to help as well. 

[sandgroper]

Good luck with them Rob, whatever you do with them I'm sure you'll have heaps of seedlings to experiment with mate. I can't stop them from popping up in my yard and I give them no help at all so they must be pretty resilient, I'm sure with the care you're going to lavish on them you'll have a rainforest in no time.

[Fusca]

No need to get all of the fibers off the seed, just the fleshy fruit.  I'll bet the fruits are very ripe now!  You could use the fruit to make jelly if you wanted but there's more seed than fruit.    Let us know if you see differences in germination of this seed vs. the green ones you got in the DR.

[Rickybobby]

6 hours ago, Fusca said:

No need to get all of the fibers off the seed, just the fleshy fruit.  I'll bet the fruits are very ripe now!  You could use the fruit to make jelly if you wanted but there's more seed than fruit.    Let us know if you see differences in germination of this seed vs. the green ones you got in the DR.

The fruit actually reminded me of a date. Sticky smelled sweet. I was tempted lol. Your right. They were very ripe when I opened the bag a lot of the fruit was splitting on its own which has made it easier to remove I hope by tomorrow to get all the rest cleaned then start to Sow. Between these guys and all the seeds in my dome. It could be a rainforest in here very soon!

[Fusca]

55 minutes ago, Rickybobby said:

The fruit actually reminded me of a date

This fruit is very similar to Butia odorata fruit which we always called "pindo dates".  I doubt that "queen dates" would catch on as a name for this fruit though.  LOL

[Rickybobby]

What size of pots do you recommend for a germinated seed? Are beer cups too shallow? Or maybe do a deeper community pot?

[Fusca]

5 minutes ago, Rickybobby said:

What size of pots do you recommend for a germinated seed? Are beer cups too shallow? Or maybe do a deeper community pot?

I'd think a standard 12 oz cup should be OK to start out with for one.  The last time I germinated them (maybe 6 years ago) I used a 1-gal container as a community pot for 5 or 6 of them and that worked fine for the first year or so.

[Rickybobby]

Fruit cleaned off was quite the chore but a beer helped that. They soaked in water and hydrogen peroxide last night and now I’m dryin the rest out 

[Rickybobby]

And after a month today I checked the. Baggy and it has started to become alive! This is one of many live queens from Australia 

thanks @sandgroper

[sandgroper]

Good stuff mate! I reckon every one of them will germinate. It's a funny world, we have a bulk green waste collection this week and I spent a bit of time yesterday pulling out seedlings and chucking them out.  Looking forward to seeing how you get on with these, they seem to grow quite quickly.