Two trees i'm growing are loaded with ripe cones, full of seed. Anyone experienced getting them to sprout? I also have a Bungeana cultivar that i'd like to use as a polinator for next season. How would that work with this plant. Many thanks. sorry for misleading header by "fertilization" i meant pollination, can i edit header?
The seeds are fairly easy to get to germinate. Getting them to stay alive is another matter! Store the seeds refrigerated (+1° to +2°C) in damp (NOT dripping wet!!) sterilised sand. Sow in a well-drained, low-organic (i.e., sandy) soil mix; keep the soil no more than moist. Space the seeds well apart (ideally one per pot) so that fungal diseases can't spread from one to the next easily. For pollinating, collect the pollen cones just as they start to shed pollen, dry them and shake the pollen out, and dust it over the new female conelets. The seeds take about a year and a half from pollination to maturity. If your current seeds are from a tree with no near neighbours of the same species, the chances are most of the seeds will be empty: check for weight (shake gently in your cupped hand, it should feel heavy if good, lightweight if not) and colour (good pine seeds are blackish or dark brown, empties are usually pale brown).
Michael thanks for the info. How long to store at 1-2 C? Are fungal diseases the reason seedlings are hard to keep alive? The pollinating process sounds exciting. I'm not sure if i know what female conelets are. These two trees are about 20 feet apart and they make clouds of pollen in early summer. So i recognize the pollen cones --are the female conelets present in the same location? Do you have a picture? Also there is P. thunbergiana and densiflora close by, would these be compatible pollinators of Bungeana? Thanks again
Now until you're ready to sow them. A month or 6 weeks is enough, but longer won't hurt them. No, they're only distantly related. [spellcheck: Pinus thunbergii. "thunbergiana" is a superfluous synonym] The female conelets are higher up the shoots than the males. I don't have a pic of P. bungeana female conelets, but here's some of P. sylvestris on an expanding new shoot in spring; they're not too different in appearance (tho' P. bungeana conelets are green, not red, if I remember rightly, and are also not right at the shoot tip like here). Left pic shows both male and female; right pic is enlarged of the female.
Michael, thanks for the education. I forgot that I'll need to wait a few years for the grafted tree to produce pollen or conelets. The pair that I have are probably from seed. Both are strong growers. They reliably made cones after 5 years in the ground Now i know what to look for and how to proceed with the seeds. Appreciate!
Yep, they're the only ones where there's any chance, though (as far as I know) no-one has succeeded yet. Doesn't help that no-one has P. squamata in cultivation away from its native area yet.
