Seed Exchange - packeting query

[Lori S.]

Okay, I'll work on it, Maggi!   

[Maggi Young]

Thanks, Lori - that's great.

[robg]

Hey, guys this is much more than I expected !! 

Lori - I can identify your seeds (you are No 22 in the Seed List and that is on the packet).

It could well be that the 'other' packet has had it's tails removed, but why the effort for something like 50+ seeds ?  All that has done is to create confusion.  The seeds do look similar and there is a short tail on each one that ends abruptly suggesting they've been cut off.  I don't know if there is any value in asking Stuart Pawley to encourage or discourage this practice.

I think what I will do is to put a proportion of each seed into each packet, and put up a post here headed 'Anemone Occidentalis seed' with a link to this thread.

Many thanks to all.
Rob

[Maggi Young]

Rob, many countries will prefer the seed with the "tails" cit off, since they can regard those as being "chaff" and not part of the seed. Also, large packets with such tailed seeds are very bulky - something Stuart has complained of in the past! 

The people trimming tailed seed are doing their best to ensure their seed is acceptable anywhere, I think.

[robg]

Many thanks Maggi

That saves me doing another post then. 

I think Ian Pryde's 'Idiot's Guide' needs a updating to include that information and also a pointer to your seed bank photos.

OK, the matter has been aired but memories are always short so if Stuart has written something on seed tails in the past, it needs to be repeated so that people like me don't waste their time and that of other members addressing something that should have been circulated by the packing organiser.

Cheers
Rob

[Karaba]

The people trimming tailed seed are doing their best to ensure their seed is acceptable anywhere, I think.

That's the case for me. I've read this http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/seed/news/Seed+Cleaning+Made+Easy/17/ and one or two other things and try to send seeds as clean as I can. And It's quite a pain in the neck to winnow bad seeds by blowing or to remove all this fluffy thing of Eriophorum, Salix ad Epilobium seeds but I've done it 

[Lesley Cox]

I have also wild collected seeds of Allium oleraceum (it grows wild in my garden )) but only one seed of Allium roseum (and I havesown it). I went to southern France this spring but it was blooming and I only collected few more bulbs. I hope to get some seeds next year.

My experience of some years ago is that Allium roseum can be a shocking weed, as it increases from bulbils formed on the old flower head, as well, presumably from seed. If growing these, do it in a pot!

[Lesley Cox]

Surprisingly, considering their paranoia about seeds, NZ's MAF are quite happy to accept Pulsatilla with tails attached. Or Anemone, as in this case, though I've always had it (briefly) as P. occidentalis.

[Rick R.]

As a seed packeter for NARGS, and in regard to pulsatilla in particular, it is not so much the bulk that tails present as a difficulty, rather it is the even more tedious task of handling seed while the tails are still attached. Separating viable seed from unfilled seed is so much faster and easier when tails are removed.  Working with Pulsatilla seed for many years on the seed ex, I can say that good seed does not necessarily mean they originally have much of a tail at all, and even seed from the same individual flower may have different tail lengths.  I think most people eventually discover, too, that there is no need to physically cut tails: there is a natural break point near the seed where the tail will easily snap off (pictured below).  I might add that for many Pulsatilla species (notwithstanding occidentalis), performing this task in the field is often quick and easy, removing most of the tails all at once from each seed head, by grabbing all the  actual seeds in one hand and breaking off the tails in bulk.

[Karaba]

Here's some picture to illustrate viable and unfilled seed from Rick's message with Pulsatilla vernalis. It's not really easy to see the difference on a picture but in reality, it's (quite) easy.
 1 : viable seeds
 2 : unfilled seeds
 3 : viable seeds without tail

[Karaba]

The same with Pulsatilla alpina alpina
(I hope that seeds are viable because those are the ones I have sent to the Seed Exchange 
 1 : viable seeds with tail
 2 : unfilled seeds with tail
 3 : viable seeds without tail
 4 : unfilled seeds without tail

[Lesley Cox]

Hard to tell from the photos I suppose but the seeds in that last picture Karaba, look pretty much fertile (filled) to me.I think I'd be sowing those "just in case."

Of course this whole subject and its various posts applies equally to Clematis.