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 ...
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.
In Pursuit of the blackhaw (Part 2) - December 10, 2024
What I had thought was a tiny root on that seed turned out to be nothing. By summer, not a single seed had germinated. I dumped the pots out and looked through the dirt for the seeds. I found them, but they all looked completely dead. I got a bigger pot, dumped all of the dirt and seeds from the two original pots in it, and just set it out in my woodland garden - just in case the seeds might not actually be dead.
I didn't forget about the seeds - I watered them when I watered other the plants in the woodland garden, but when an entire year passed with no sign of any germination, I had pretty much written the whole thing off as another failure.
So I can't even begin to describe how shocked (and excited) I was when I watered the pots in the woodland garden yesterday.
What was that? Was I imagining things????
No, I wasn't. There it was - one tiny pale seedling poking up through the soil.
Now of course I may be all excited for nothing, because it may turn out to be something like a privet seed that a bird planted in the pot.
But I don't think so. I am pretty sure I can see the flat black seed coat. It appears to have split open, setting the tiny leaves free.
But the million dollar question...why on EARTH did it decide to germinate now? We're heading into the coldest part of the year. Blackhaw is a deciduous shrub, so I can't imagine that the seedlings are supposed to come up in the fall or winter!
I wonder if temperature swings (cold at night, then warm in the day when the sun was shining on the pot) tricked the seed into thinking it was spring.
Well, no matter. I'm not taking any chances that it will be killed by the cold weather. I brought the pot inside and put it under the grow light with my citrus trees. My hope is that if one is germinating, now that I've brought the pot inside where it's warmer, there will be more.
Have I finally gotten lucky? If it does turn out to be a blackhaw, and it doesn't die from dampening off or something (like Betty Boop, the kitten, eating it) maybe I'm going to actually have a blackhaw shrub to go in my yard.
That just made my day!!!