Ove the last 8 months I have obtained 100 seeds of C. alpinum, 500 each of C. ventricosum and vogellianum, and 1200 C. quindiuense. As my winters are cool, I was curious about trying to replicate habitat conditions better by giving them warmer daytime temps. So I constructed a cloche (low tunnel) about 15m long, 1.5m high, and 2m wide. I put most of the seeds into my shade structure where temperatures pretty much follow my normal air temp., and a small sample of seeds into the cloche structure under shade with open sides, which kept day temps about 10C warmer, but nights the same as ambient. I felt this might be a bit closer to tropical high altitude climates.

The results have been interesting. Germination was faster under the warmer days, but the seeds also rotted out a lot. It seems that C. alpinum can handle the warmth, but the others cannot. The unheated seedlings are now far more advanced, and I have lost 2 that I have seen. The warmer seeds have been very disappointing, and I will discontinue the experiment for fear of lossing them all.

This is quite encouraging for me, as I have 600 acres of cool  essentially frost free farmland which should suit the Ceroxylon perfectly.

Now I need to know if I should keep my 2000 Parajubaea tora.micro. seeds under the cloche. I am assuming they will be like Butia, and enjoy the warmth. Last time I germinated Paras they were faster under plastic... any opinions?

Parajubaeas like heat to germinate, then cool..imho

Wow. I hope you will set up some sort of trust for the property. It sounds like you'd have a good enough population for a stable population of several species. It will take a while, but man, what a sight it will be in a hundred years or so.

Zac

(STEVE IN SO CAL @ Jan. 09 2007,16:12)

QUOTE

Parajubaeas like heat to germinate, then cool..imho

I have read about temp cycling and mine spent a month in the refrigerator before going into germination containers.  After eight months without germination I am now letting my torallyi and sunkha seeds dry before throwing them back in the chill.  I am wondering if with all the cold we have had, maybe I would be better off leaving them outside for a diurnal temp variation instead of a constant cold.

Bennz, from what I've read about Parajubaea germination, they like heat to germinate.  I got 75% germination in 3 months using bottom heat and cracking the endocarps.  Cracking the endocarps of var. microcarpa was very easy in a vice.  I used 100% perlite, not very much water, in a sealed container w/ bottom heat around 85-90F.  If you do a search for Parajubaea in this Seed forum you'll find my thread which has some early conclusions I found.

Cracking seeds leads to high losses doesn't it? My expereience has been that Parajubaea will eventually give very close to 100% germiantion, if I wait long enough.  I would rather wait 5 years for germination for any seed than know it never will, especially in context of NZs extreme import regulations that always at least doubles the price by the time seeds arrive, and takes a lot of time and effort.

With the micro, I actually did an experiment there as well. I thought about habitat, and guessed that as it is a high altitude dry site (harsh sunlight), the soil is likely to be low in humus. Also that the seeds would go through a dry cold period in the tropical dry winter before germination. So I sowed the first 1000 seeds into low humus sandy loam (incidentally I am a soil grower, and have found other media more difficult to work with).

Of the remaining 1000 seeds, I put them into the refrigerator dry to replicate the dry wet season. I remeoved 250 every week, so I now have a controled expereiment with seeds in warm day/cool night conditions, some direct sown, some with dry stratification from 1 to 4 weeks long. It will be very interesting to see what differences there are, if any.

Ceroxylon are far superior palms to Parajubaea imho. Parajubaea need to be at fuill maturity to look good, most of the time they look 'dry', they look like arid climate plants. Ceroxylon look 'wet', may not makes sense, but works for me. I can picture Ceroxylon looking somehow right in a mixed planting with our native Rhopalostylis. Parajubaea don't look quite as good in this country, same kind of problem with Phoenix and Washingtonia. They grow well, but don't fit as well.

Cracking the seeds of var. microcarpa yas yielded no losses for me.  I think var. toralyi is harder to crack without damaging the endosperm.  With all those seeds you should at least give a few the crack to see what you get.  You might be pleasantly surprised.

I had a bag of torallyi seeds that sat at 80 degrees for several days, then 70 degrees, back to 80s, then outside with lows around 37 degrees.  The next day after I brought the bag indoors two seeds had radicles visible.  I put the seeds inside my greenhouse, growing in a nice soil-less medium.  Radicle growth is slower than my queen palms.

I just placed in a pot a Ceroxylon quindiuiense seed that I got from Colombia last Thursday. I added a gentle amount of water to the mix, covered with plastic and set it out in the cool outdoors. I have noticed that other seeds scattered around the floor where I picked mine were wrinkled, and noticed mine is starting to wrinkle a little bit as well. Normal?