Hi,

Im new so I wanted to say hello.

Anyways... Ive been determined to grow some indoor kentia / howea palms indoors. I transplanted some used palms but. Most of them died off and the ones that made it seem healthy yet stunted (fronds arent opening); I have since gotten some palm specific ferts and see if that helps them out (I wasnt gentle and shocked the hell out of them Im sure). So I ordered some Kentia seeds not thinking much about it. When I got them I read up about them and some people saying they wont germinate for 6 months to over a year... CRAZY.

So I used some techniques used to germinate seeds of another nature and got them to germinate in under 2 months. Not to sound cocky but if I had to do it again I wouldnt be surprised if I could do it in under 1 month because I wasted some time trying to figure stuff out. Here is what worked for me:

Tools: Utility Knife Tool (leatherman or equivalent), root hormone, ziplock bag, paper towels, decent soil preferably with earth worms, and a planter.

1) took some needle nose pliers and cracked the husks apart until it was just the seed

2) then I openned the file tool and filed away all th brown coating so that the seeds were 80-90% white

3) folded a paper towel so that it can fit in the ziplock bag

4) wet the paper towel

5) put the seeds in on the wet paper towel and then covered all the seeds in rooting hormone poweder

6) took another paper towel, folded it accordingly, wet it, then covered the seeds. So I essentially had a wet paper towel sandwich with seeds covered in root hormone in the middle.

7) gently slid this into a zip lock bag and sealed it up. then put it in a droor/cabinet (dark) place for about 2-3 weeks (I did 3 weeks but I think I could have done it faster)

8) when the seeds begin to mold/rot, get slightly gamey, I put them in some pots of soil and forgot about them for about a 2 weeks (at most... might have just been 1 1/2 weeks)

9) woke up this morning and BAM a little seedling is popping out of the soil. I very gently dug down to make sure it was the Kentia palm seed and sure enough it was.


One the reasons it took 2 months total is that I was initially trying things that didnt work which wasted a lot of time.

What didnt seem to work: when I got the seeds I looked online and read that all I had to do was crack the hull off the seed then soak them for a few weeks. However, I dont think this much because the seed coating is so damn tough I doubt any water was activating the seed to germinate. This was a huge time waste.

Without doing anything special (like cracking the hull etc.) one third of my Howea belmoreana seeds had germinated within 8 weeks:

So this would be my advice: If you want to have 10 Howea palms, buy 30 seeds and forget 20 of them.

In the right climate you can just shove the seeds into the ground and, in a few weeks, at least some will have sprouted. I did this a few years ago and the ones that sprouted are a few feet tall now. My oldest Kentia in the front yard is FULL of fruit. Some will be ripe by next spring in my estimation. I will do the same and shove a few into the ground wherever I'd like to see baby Kentia palms.

Lorax, welcome to the board! What part of the world are you from?

For some reason here they tend to come up in Autumn. A small number will come up in the first year, then the next year they'll virtually all come up. I do it the way they used to do it on Lord Howe Island. Just whack them all in a huge community bed and pot them up when they're ready. The husk obviously needs to break down and come apart a bit before they will germinate. The long time to germinate is probably due to the husk needing to soften up and compost away a bit. The only problem with trying to speed the process up by filing off husks etc is that you risk damaging the endosperms which then leaves an opening for fungal and bacterial attack of the seedling.

Im currently in south west usa. Im afraid I didnt germinate 1/3rd of mine yet. So perhaps my method is pointless and I got preemtpively excited.

What's a good place to get good kentia seeds online?
How do you go about germinating them?

with regards to damaging the endosperm, is it really likely to happen? Just leave the ends of the seed alone because thats where the endsperm areas are no?

thanks

Edited August 25, 201510 yr by Lorax

The embryo I think is at one end, but the white coconut looking stuff is the endosperm and you have to be careful not to slice into that stuff.

yes, Kentia fruit are extremely hard, I got some kentia palm seeds from the park

Im sure i filed off some of the white stuff under the seed coating (not to be confused with the husk). some of them sprouted just fine.... I didnt slice into it at all but Im sure some of it got filed off.