BCSS - Forum

Hi all. I was wondering if anybody had tried to germinate seeds of this species and if you have do you think the large flat seeds would benefit from an overnight soaking in boiled water. One seed from the ten I planted 2-3 weeks ago has germinated. Am I being impatient?

Steve.

Hi Steve, I soaked 12seeds of Adenia multiflorum overnight before adding to pot. All are doing very well after 100prcent germination. I was told to discard any that floated. Cheers

Eric Williams wrote:Hi Steve, I soaked 12seeds of Adenia multiflorum overnight before adding to pot. All are doing very well after 100prcent germination. I was told to discard any that floated. Cheers

Hi Eric. Thanks for the reply. I presume you mean Adenium multiflorm. The Adenia balleyi seeds I bought from Mesa Gardens are about 1cm and quite flat, I don't know how this compares with Adenium seeds.

Steve.

Adenium seeds are elongated, bit long tube shaped, light brown in colour.

Are you using bottom heat Steve? If not you are doing extraordinarily well getting even one to germinate and if you are I wouldn't expect much more germination after that amount of time. Before I got a propagator for Christmas I'd never germinated a single Adenia seed, despite trying with ballyi, spinosa, glauca and others. I collected some seed from a tuberous Adenia in 2015 in Mozambique and sent some to my travelling companion when we got home. He got 100% germination sitting the pot on his heated conservatory floor and I got 0% on my sunniest windowsill. I tried again with the propagator a year later and got 100% myself. I've also germinated A.firingalavensis, A.epigea, A.venenata and A.isaloensis in it, all within 7-10 days. Bottom heat seems to be the thing.

A.ballyi is apparently a difficult species to germinate. I bought a couple of seedlings from an American grower a couple of years ago grown from her own seed and she wouldn't sell me any seed as well as the germination is so poor she needed to keep them all for propagation.

So one out of ten isn't bad.

Hi
another question is do you stand them upright, I have done with succulent seeds before & it seemed to help but I wasn't sure if it was just chance that more of the upright seed appeared to germinate.
I have been having a worrying time with Nicks seed but it hasn't finally started germinating- cheers nick

Tina wrote: I have been having a worrying time with Nicks seed but it hasn't finally started germinating- cheers nick

I've had no luck with the A.olaboensis Tina either. I think that maybe the seed was too old and dessicated, I found the old fruits on the ground around the plants probably from former years, this year's fruit on the plants were empty.

Nick_G wrote:Are you using bottom heat Steve? If not you are doing extraordinarily well getting even one to germinate and if you are I wouldn't expect much more germination after that amount of time. Before I got a propagator for Christmas I'd never germinated a single Adenia seed, despite trying with ballyi, spinosa, glauca and others. I collected some seed from a tuberous Adenia in 2015 in Mozambique and sent some to my travelling companion when we got home. He got 100% germination sitting the pot on his heated conservatory floor and I got 0% on my sunniest windowsill. I tried again with the propagator a year later and got 100% myself. I've also germinated A.firingalavensis, A.epigea, A.venenata and A.isaloensis in it, all within 7-10 days. Bottom heat seems to be the thing.

A.ballyi is apparently a difficult species to germinate. I bought a couple of seedlings from an American grower a couple of years ago grown from her own seed and she wouldn't sell me any seed as well as the germination is so poor she needed to keep them all for propagation.

So one out of ten isn't bad.

Sorry I haven't got back to you Nick, I got distracted by life. Yes I am using bottom heat so here's hoping. I soaked them overnight in boiled water and all bar one sank to the bottom of the bowl which I hope means they're not too desiccated.