Hi, everyone. I hope to start several different species of Acer from seed this fall. I've started Acer palmatum from seed before, no big deal, relatively easy and as we all know, super addicting. But I only have experience with fresh seed, so only cold strat was needed. Seeing as I have no source of fresh seed for several of the varieties I want to grow, (triflorum, griseum, pentaphyllum, etc.) I will have to purchase seed that will require a warm strat prior to cold strat. It is pretty simple from what I've read, but I was hoping people with experience could explain to me how they do it. Thanks, Kyle
Not done it with Acer seeds but all I did was put them dry in a cardboard box kept in the living room where the temps. required will be maintained.Then soaked and cold stratted as normal.
Oh, I thought they had to be moist during warm strat as well in order to help break down the hard seedcoat. I'm gonna try some triflorum and griseum seed, but from what I've read griseum is incredibly difficult to have success with.
I couldn't find out wether moisture was required so I went by my gut feeling that moisture,warmth and no air circulation would probably invite mold/fungus over such a prolonged spell.Hope you're successful however you do it :)
I'm very interested in this subject as I'd like to grow A. maximowiczianum, which is doubly dormant. The semencesdupuy.com (reliable French seed site) treats them the same as for A. griseum: 4 months warm and 4 months cold stratification. I've never done this, and instead have relied on the "multi-year" method for griseum as suggested in Dirr (Ref Manual of Woody Plant Propagation). With I might add zero luck. Dirr also suggests the "maple caesarean section" approach that was detailed by S. Grant in the Maple Society newsletter a while ago, but I haven't tried that method. It does let you do a single cold stratification though, although it is very tricky and labour intensive. I hope someone here is an expert in this subject! :) -E
