Germination Experiment

3/22/03

After having so much trouble with my 'self-collected' seeds, I decided to buy some seeds. They all come from Bell County and arrived here a few days ago. I immediately planted four, but left the rest for more careful examination.

Since I have found the 'shave test' a good way to determine viability, I decided to test a few of the Bell County seeds. In the end, I tested all the remaining seeds (20) and all were dead.

All the seeds floated in acetone, my cleaning agent for the resin coating the seeds.

I was able to extract some embryos, which are pictured below.

Three embryos, with close-ups. The large dark object to the left of the 3 embryos is a seed cover, added for scale. All were dead and easily extracted from seed cover with tweezers.