Winter 2024

 

Sunrise at 7:35 am on Saturday, December 21, 2024.

In pursuit of the Blackhaw (Part 2)

It's been almost two years since Mo and I cleared the honeysuckle and briars from the blackhaw bushes (Viburnum prunifolium) growing at the end of The Twelve Acres (January 22, 2023).  

The batch of cuttings I took that day didn't make it either (well, there is one that might have put out a root, but it's still pretty "iffy" whether or not it has).  So with no luck on the cuttings, I thought I would try starting some from seed.  But to start them from seeds, I first had to get some seeds!  

I walked down to check on them in late May, but there wasn't a single bloom.  There wouldn't be any seeds in 2023. 

A year passed, and with one thing and another, I didn't make it down there in the spring to see if they had bloomed this year.

But in mid-July, I needed to get out for a walk, and decided I'd go ahead and check on them.  I wasn't really very optimistic that there would be anything this time either.  But to my absolute delight, a couple of them actually had berries!

I bagged up several clusters to protect them from the birds and to catch them if they got ripe and fell off the plant.  I made plans to go back in late summer to collect the ripe berries.

I walked down to check on them a couple of times in late summer, but was surprised to find that they still weren't ripe, even in late September.  I learned something...I thought they would turn purple within a couple of months but they didn't.

It was late October before the berries were finally ripe.

I collected the little bags and thanked the plants for allowing me to have some berries.  

When I got them home, I squeezed some of the seeds out of their berries, but left other berries whole. I've read that the berries have a good flavor, but after having actually seen them in person, I'm not sure if they're worth trying to eat because the seeds are so big - they take up almost the entire berry! 

Whole blackhaw berries (the blackish purplish wrinkly things) and some very large seeds.

I ended up with about 50 seeds.  Now...how to plant them?  

I figured they'd be like other fall-ripening wild fruits where they just needed a period of cold moist stratification in order to germinate.  I couldn't find much at all online, but finally came across a post where someone who had started some Viburnum plants from seed said they first needed warm moist stratification then cold moist stratification.

So I have them in some potting mix in a couple of flower pots sitting on the dish receiver in the living room.  This is their warm moist stratification period.  In January, I'll move them into an unheated room for their cold moist stratification, and then hope they'll come up in the spring.

After about a month and a half, I couldn't help but dig around in the pots to see if anything was going on, and I think one of the berries had a tiny root coming out of it.  Of course it could just have been a bit of mold or something.  

But knowing the way things go for me, they probably all had little roots and I broke them off digging around in the pot.

Patience.  I need to learn to patience.