I am about to begin my annual seed planting and have not used a fungicide the past 2 years to treat seeds as I plant them straight off the trees into a peat seed starting mix. What fungicide have others found useful if at all, and is treating the samaras with a fungicide necessary at all. Does it enhance germination rates and/or seedling health? Would welcome any thoughts and advice. Many thanks.
Have used Wilson "Seed Treat" fungicide dust, contains 4% Thiram { highly toxic} and had good germination in peat bags in the fridge. Don't really know if it is necessary. Using half peat and half sand in a container left outside does seem the simplest here, kept moist.
I am trying to germinate some seed for the first time. I didn't use any fungicide in my mix. Since i soaked my seeds as soon as i picked them i went with the 2x stratification technique that is mentioned in Vertrees 2nd edition. 60 days moist & room temp, 90 days in 35-40F. I might harvest a few more and try another batch with fungicide. I read about someone using a bit of bleach in the moistening water. Does anyone have success without adding something for fungus? Katsura, how did it work out the past years? Which seeds were you using?
I love the generativity of acer germination. In my 1st year 2006 I got 25% germination; 60 out of 82 cultivars germinated. In 2007 I got 35% germination;I have not calculated how many of the 102 cultivars came up. These 25% & 35% germ rates were higher than these numbers for the trays I cold stratified in the fridge. Cold stratification vastly increases germination rates here in the Bay Area vs trays left outdoors. In neither year did I treat the seeds/samaras generally with a fungicide altho in 2007 I did treat a few seeds in 10% Clorox overnight soak to test the method out & the seeds sprouted fine. I pick my seeds fresh off my trees and plant immediately (2 seeds/cell) in 1 inch square 72 cells per tray flats in EB Wilson Seed Starter peat mix. Seldom do I soak overnight because I plant lots of seeds and that it too time consuming. I try to keep meticulous records. Of course I only know the matrilineal genetics line since I do not hand pollinize. This year because I have so many trees with samaras that I have never seen produce before, I am planting 20 trays (2 seeds/72 cells each). In 2007 because of the time involved de-winging, I planted many whole samaras which made me wonder if I should fungicide this year because the wing surface is so large a vector in collecting viruses/bacteria etc. I found generally no difference in germination with or without wings left on the seeds. I wish I had more refridgerator room than 12 trays because 2-3 of the 5 trays not refridgerated in 2007 had no germination which means in the 12 trays refridgerated the 35% germ rate was close to 50%. As u can tell I love germinating maples, but I am lucklily retired and have the time to do it becuz repotting from trays to 4 in pots and keeping many hundreds watered March thru Oct (no rain in Bay area those months) requires constant vigilance but it is a passion.
Katsura thank you for those details. I am working with only 3 types of seeds. 2 shirasawanums and J.p. Hogyoku. I left the wings on all of them. Are your plants in the ground? And do you have any interesting seedlings that you might post photos of? Lastly, why do you think you have more trees producing samara this year?
PTB, I posted a thread on this forum earlier this year about the abundance of samaras this year, and seemingly all of the replies from around the world mentioned the same thing. i don't know why; I thought it was because we had a very rainy winter in 2006 (altho a dry winter 2007) in N. Cal. Many tell me becuz the trees are signalling a cold and/or dry winter this winter but I rather doubt that wives' tale. Yes, I have some interesting seedlings but they are only 1-2 years old and it takes several years to see if traits are novel and/or stable. I shud photo and post but I don't know how to. Wud love comment about the plethora of samaras this year. I've looked in the literature for an answer without success.
Well the samara bonanza has not struck on my deck. Last spring i gave all my larger plants an intensive root pruning, which probably inhibited samara production. I found this comment in relation to Acer rubrum samara production: "Phenological observations indicate that the occurrence of spring frosts at the time of flower bud flushing could contribute to decreasing the abundance of seeds."---M. Francine Tremblay, Yves Bergeron, Danielle Lalonde, Yves Mauffette (2002) But it doesn't look like you get much frost in Novato. Looking forward to when you post some seedling pictures. I am very curious to grow a few seedlings from A.s Red dawn and Palmatifolium.
PTB, I found as Red Dawn very easy to germinate, and I hope u do too. To answer an earlier question, most of my plants are in containers. We do get some frosts in Novato. After your question about what is causing heavy samara production, I looked through Hartmann & Kester's PLANT PROPAGATION 7th ed. which is a remarkable text book on propagating and also looked at D.M. van Gelderen's MAPLES of the WORLD without finding any explanations. I will keep trying to find an answer.
In areas that would sow seed outdoors in flats in a sand, perlite, vermiculite mixed medium then Captan, wettable powder form, was lightly sprinkled onto the seeds to ward off any fungal invaders. Benlate or Sulfur dust can be used as well. I do not like using liquid forms to soak the seed but some people will macerate the seed in solution prior to placing them in Sphagnum Moss and then refrigerate to enhance earlier germination of the seed. Personally I have no problems with sowing seed with the samaras left on. The samaras are the more likely to serve as the host for fungal diseases however as in some years the beginnings of Botrytis can be seen as a speckling on the backsides of the samaras that are shaded from direct light in cool and moist areas in the early Fall here where I am. By Winter the seeds can turn an allover brown color to brownish black color in cooler areas because of it. I've seen seed coats and samaras completely black in Oregon before prior to the onset of Winter. The fungus does not inhibit the viable seed from germinating but can affect the seed after it does germinate if we are not careful about using a reasonable sanitary medium for the seeds to grow in. Botrytis by itself does not kill but put it in contact with another fungus, such as a soil borne or a soil inhabiting organism, can be real trouble later for seedlings. An added note: where I am we have some Narcissus and some Spring bulbs starting to break ground but this is normal for this time of year for them. A few plants here say early Fall as well but then again for us that means an Indian Summer of which we've been in one here since mid August when we started seeing morning dew on the ground. The Maples have not set their last flush of new growth yet as they are in a flush right now as seen with most of the palmatums here, aside from a few of the Tridents, which means that they feel the onset of cold is not all that forthcoming for them. All of the japonicums here have new leaves on them at the moment. Jim
Jim, thanks for those notes and observations. I will be sure to maintain sanitary conditions if i get seedlings. I stratified the seeds in moistened fresh cactus soil. I did not try outdoors because we get close to zero F. here some winters. Also indian summer here. My palmatums still making a little push--slight concern! Katsura, thanks for the vote of confidence with Red dawn. I love the shirasawanums and would be thrilled to have a batch of seedlings next spring.
Jim, thanks for your insights. Any thoughts about this year's seemingly heavy samara production?. Interestingly, I have many maples this year producing seeds that I have never had seed before and I have some trees that seem never to seed despite their age & size seeming mature enough to do so. I see little in the general literature about the mechanics of maple flowering & seed production. Any thoughts please?
I am not seeing a lot more seed production this year than in the past two or three years. The only tree that has much more seed than usual for us is my Oshu beni. I saw a lot of seed in the Spring that was shucked by the plants pretty fast here. Only the Tridents now are starting to have some seed fall to the ground but most of the palmatum seed is long gone, except for the Oshu beni. What causes some of the Maples to set a lot of seed can depend on the age of the trees, climate and how much they have stressed and in some years getting some cold chill that they did not get in previous years. Some cultivars produce much more seed than others once they get up to a certain age and some types of Maples such as Nomura and Shojo group reds can set more seed in some years and hold them longer on the tree than some of the more common Atropurpueum group and the closely related Nigrum group plants do. One thing that may or may not be true or consistent in other areas is that for us here if the seed stays longer on the trees, our viability rate for the seed is greater, which should translate into a higher percentage of seed germination. May not hold true for all areas but for us it seems to be for the palmate types, japonicums and buergerianums. I've had better luck with fresh seed from Silver and Sugar Maples however but that may just be for me here and not true or common elsewhere. If your Maples set seed across the board at a higher rate than usual and your trees are all about 12-20 years old then you may have had some cold that contributed to the seed set. For some trees the freeze we had in January really helped some of them seem to bloom better than in previous years. A stressed Almond can bloom profusely in the Spring as well, so can a stressed Apricot and Plum here so cold chill alone is not it for them. If there is a moral in all of this I saw my 17 year old seedling Apricot bloom for the first time this year! I will say this though that in some of our palmate form plants that I saw more flowers in the late Summer new growth than I have seen in some time. I am not sure what that means yet. We have some flower clusters on the two Filifera purpurea right now and the three Tsuma gakis are starting to show a hint of some intermediate flower clusters also with all of them in fifteen gallon containers. I thought my Kinran that had some mid Summer flower clusters that were quickly shucked in a matter of a couple of days in a 36" box was just an enigma but now we have other trees at the misses location that are showing late flower clusters also but the clusters are not and will not be fully developed this late in the growing season. If you guys are serious about growing seedlings go for it. I have a seedling Burgundy Lace that I like better than the old plant. Holds up better in heat and hot winds, not as fussy about salts in the soil and I get more evenness of color in the Spring and later on see three leaf colors of new growth in the Summer. Heck of a deal. Jim
Jim, Your imput is always rewarding to read. Thank you. Great story about your Burgundy Lace. Seed set interests me. As you say so I observe that some of my trees produce lots of samaras every year - Bloodgood, Fireglow, Moonfire, Azuma Murasaki, Atrolineare, Seiryu, Umegae, Maiku jaku, Red Pygmy Katsura, Viridis, Red ribbonleaf, Kasagiyama, Shino buga oka, Nuresagi, Elegans, Koto no ito, Masu muraski, Sazanami etc. Others never produce despite the trees being mature enough like Shaina, Red Filigree Lace (I've seen flowers and a very very rare seed which seems to disappear). Interestingly my 2 big Butterfly's have not produced 1 seed and they are good sized trees yet BOTH have seeds this year. Finally a Versicolor I have is producing lots of seed this year for this 1st time ever and yet a Karasugawa right next to it which has a bigger caliper and an Asahi zuru nearby with a caliper bigger than both have never produced a seed between them. I gather the maturity of maples is not just age determined and events can re-juvenilize a tree, but I wish I knew more about seed set. I feel chastened by my ignorance. And the literature on seed set is sadly non-reachable. I think van Gelderen's Maples of the World is a 1st rate text and we are very lucky to have it, but I re read for the umpteenth time last night because of this thread the section on inflorescences etc, and it was like Greek. I always learn from your posts, Jim, and I thank you for your generosity of knowledge. Working nurserymen seem to have the knowledge in this field while academic acerologists seem not to exist, and the nurserymen are working not publishing so our transfer of knowledge is limited & slow which makes forums like this that much more precious. Thanks for sharing, Jim.
Off-topic - germination of seeds With the advent of grafting Japanese Maples almost exclusively, the only real reason most people used as their criterion to collect seed was to use as a rootstock and even then there were not a whole lot of nurserymen that did try to grow their own understock. I feel the more successful people in the nursery trade on the wholesale end did grow their own rootstock as it gives them an advantage over the people that didn't, that used any old green rootstock that they could get their hands on. We have always been limited in research done on Japanese Maples in comparison to much more dynamic and scientific study on Citrus as an example. We do not have a lot of peer reviewed Journal articles on Japanese Maples to work with and lot of that is because the Japanese Maple has the connotation of being just a landscape plant in the mindsets of most of the intellectuals as opposed to Citrus that has almost global agronomic impact. Look at the dollars and who is getting them. What dollars do we get out of Maples in comparison? How can Maples ever compete with Florida Citrus? Who will get the funding dollar to carry out research and further study on Maples in comparison to Citrus? That is what the bottom line is here and why we do not have a lot of information in regards to Maples as what we got instead were individuals that chose to learn more about Maples and had to do things pretty much on their own with little help from anyone else. Ask Talon how he got into Maples and then ask him how tough it was to get into the position he is in now. Ask Andre Iseli how tough it was for him to get his plants to where they are now when in years past they had a problem that took them years to clean up. Ask the people that knew Richard Wolff sometime how many seeds he planted just to get a few plants that he felt he could name or that looked promising for a few years and then fell apart in the next couple of years and died. We do not have that so much in Citrus and one reason why is they have a greater selection of standardized rootstocks to play with. We really only ever had a handful of people that were growing their own seed for rootstocks and even today none of them are standardized in that the rootstock that Talon uses will it work well in Holland and in New Zealand and Japan. We have some rootstocks coming out of Japan that have been sanitized and doctored up and have worked well for a few locations but in Maples the biggest obstacle to overcome no matter who is growing these plants has been, we may have 1000 liner plants that we sold, how many of those plants are still alive 10 years later? Who goes back in and takes count of where are they now and how many are left? Then we can break it down further by how many are still in containers and how many have been planted in the ground. Anyone can try to germinate seed but only a couple of people have the patience to deal with paltry percentages no matter what we do. Take 1000 seed, stratify them, get perhaps 100 seed to germinate and then do what we have to do to help the seedlings along and then see perhaps 10 reach a bona fide nursery standard five gallon sized plant [percentages can vary from plant to plant, I just used a facsimile I had with a Dogwood as my off the cuff example]. It takes a lot of initiative and is a real test of our patience and germinating seed requires us to turn the other cheek sometimes when we realize we are in a futile position of knowing that no matter what we do failure is what we are looking at much of the time but we go on and carry out our mission as planned and hope for that one plant we feel can make a difference. If we try hard enough, for long enough we will get that plant. The books can tell us how and why a plant produces seed and we can learn viability rates of seed from various plants but what we do not know is much about Japanese Maples. It is not that some cultivars never produce seed as there is no interest in people wanting to know which ones those are or which ones those seem to be as it is rare for some named forms to produce seed in comparison to others. Invariably when someone in Pleasant Hill, Oregon gets a Red Filigree Lace to set some seed it is an event that no one cares to know or equate but to us that have had that plant for 20-30 years and never have seen our plants yield one samara, we take notice of that event and become intently aware of what has gone on. It is the sharing of information like that is what is important not the person or the persona but the plant and we do not and have not talked much about the plant as we are too busy wanting to promote other things. What you want to know is not what causes an Octopus to set seed but how do we enhance that plants ability to set viable seed. What needs to happen for us to take that seed from that plant and be successful year in and year out with it. From my personal view with much of the named forms you are asking for too much as the proof is in Japan when we see what has gone on with seed that drops from the mother plant and we get some seedlings for a year or two and then see them perish right where they were. Then we see where the seed that had been dispersed by that mother plant had germinated near another Maple and those seedlings live beyond what those seedlings did in her nest. Drives us crazy trying to figure that out or why is it that a Red Squirrel can disperse Pecans into my containers and lo and behold I get more seedling Pecans from their interaction than if I had tried to do it myself. I do not have an answer for this but the misses has a Sherwood Flame in her front courtyard that has been in the ground for 15 years and was a good sized 15 gallon plant (roughly a 12 year old Maple) when I put it into the ground for her. Every year that Maple has set lots of seed and until this year no seeds have ever germinated anywhere in the yard. This year we have over 100 seedlings that are still alive right under the tree and some were dispersed into other nearby planters. Why this year, did we see the seed germinate and become so many seedlings when in past years we saw none? Was it that the seed was more viable this year due to more bee activity than in past years? Was it that the tree was able to self itself a whole lot better than in previous years or is the seed even from last years seed set? We assume that the seed was from last year but it may not have been. Some Maple seed can remain in the soil for up to six years and not germinate so I cannot say that the seed that germinated was from last years crop as I do not know that to be a fact but I do know I have several seedlings and they are not all Sherwood Flame as some are Otto's dissectum and some are Ornatum. In all this time we had no seedlings ever in that planter and now we have so many that I cannot even go in there to hand pull the Oxalis out of the ground as I have orders not to go in there again and inadvertently step on a Maple seedling trying to get to the blasted weed that is trying to take over a corner of the planter. I will not lift any of the seedlings out of the ground either. They will stay right where they are until perhaps next year they will be ready to lift out of the ground when they have some root support then to help them along. Jim
Jim, very interesting observations appreciating the mystery in natures' processes. Accounting for the dynamics of all the variables that you mentioned with regard to germination patterns would be real tricky. Do you think that in nature certain seedlings are more robust and resist fungal disease or maybe certain environments suppress fungal growth and allow for better survival rates? Have you noticed that certain cultivar seedlings are more/less susceptible to fungal problems? Thanks for sharing.
Wonderful share, Jim. The difficulty of it all is why I respect farmers so much. What a way to make a living! I love the midwifery of germinating maples; being so actively involved in new life adds to the meaning of my life. I feel like your Red Squirrel. He sounds smart!
Here is a link in which the money spent may well be worthwhile for some people. I would be interested in knowing the reference citations in this article. JSTOR: American Journal of Botany: Vol. 84, No. 9 (Sep., 1997), pp. 1294-1300 Another option is to go to a library and read the article. JSTOR [WorldCat.org] I have found no University of California Hilgardia articles on Acer so far, at least not from the sources that I have access to at this time. Jim
Here is a PDF of the article Jim refers to, very interesting AND raises even more questions. http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/reprint/84/9/1294.pdf
