minkes - Celtis Occidentalis - #1

[minkes]

So here it starts. I ordered Celtis Occidentalis seeds from eBay at January 19. 2025, cold stratified in wet napkin inside fridge since then and today planted half of them. Because of current weather here (freezing nights and warm days) I decided to go safe way and I will plant rest of them later. I am from northern Slovakia so my growing zone is something like 6b.







After some stratification planted today to continue their journey outside.

 

[yashu]

Do you have to grind the outside coating off these a bit before sowing? I think @Kievnstavick has a thread going where he is germinating the same species and had sanded the outside with 100 grit sandpaper. Maybe they can chime in with some input.

 

[Kievnstavick]

You don't have to grind/sand the seed coating in order to germinate the seeds.

The stratification period is usually long enough to break down the exterior seed coat or germination inhibiting chemicals.

The reason I sanded a couple of mine was to test a method of skipping the process of stratification and/or scarification. This idea stemmed from a similar process needed in order to get Adansonia Digitata seeds to germinate. As I have had some presumed success with Carpinus turczaninovii, I decided to trial it with some Celtis.

In the case of A. Digitata, the fruits need to be consumed by an elephant and past through their digestive tract. Their gut biome breaks down the seed coating enough to allow water to penetrate through the radical and weakens it enough that the expanding cotyledons are able to burst open the seed coat. As someone who lives far outside if their natural environment, the only way to break down the seed coating was to use mechanical means. The down side to that being that the seed coat isn't weakened. So when the cotyledens expand, you usually have to remove the seed remnant after expansion.

 

[yashu]

A have some baobab seeds that a friend brought back from Africa and I was told about trying to scarify them to get them to germinate. I’m still sitting on them as they were given to me in December but this reminded me I should give them a try.

 

[yashu]

Double post

 

[minkes]

First sign of hope . Better now, than in autumn..

 

[minkes]

Big update ! So from ~50 seeds only one sprouted .

 

[minkes]

Update of my 2% success rate

 

[minkes]

I found in Prague ZOO tree that looked like Celtis. Could somebody confirm, if I am right? I have only photos of leave and seeds. If so, I will try to plant them next spring

 

[minkes]

I need to start using labels on my pots with seeds. I thought that I planted Zelkova in this one on the photo and I was wondering why they look so different than other Zelkova seedlings (probably suffled them at spring, when I need few times to put them in the garage because of frost). It looks like I have better success rate with my Celtis seeds. Can anybody confirm my mistake? Are these Celtis seedlings?

 

[minkes]

Probably these are not Celtis, although they look very much like it. I compared them with my only ony 100% Celtis seedling and their stems are little different. I think these are just Sweet Birch seedlings. I remembered in this pot should be only seeds from botanic park I visited last autumn But lesson learned I need to label my seed pots