Harvesting and storage of ceph seed

John Yates

John Yates

Carnivorous Plant Addict
The harvesting of ceph seed
you must let them be fully mature , harvesting un-mature seed can result in non viable seed , they must be all most ready to drop , have harvested seed to early and germination rates were very poor, letting them mature to all most drop out stage is the best for viability , in my experience ,in the wild you actually dont see a lot of seedling's around the sites , from memory the most seedling i have seen were at coal mine beach site, and that has been devastated by land sides now, most other sites looked to me not to have large number of seed grown seedlings, mainly from root stem runners they multiply , conditions can be harsh and rain can washed away seed from area that are not favorable to seedling to grow I think, the sites are small in area and out side that area you just dont find plants , and i mean a mater a some times just a few meters , other site can be larger but no more than 5 to 10 m and never wide usually in a very narrow bandwidth and a few meters from there grow site area , so let your seed mature
Seed, they need that colder winter days for stratification as well . .
Once you have harvested the seed, dont handle the seed at all with fingers ,I cut the stem and gently shake or tap out make sure seed is in a clean good size container , preferably a new one or one that has been washed well before re-use ,especially if your going to use them in T/C, to keep contams down ,dust is a very bad contaminate, once you have got all the seed out they will be some stubborn ones always are , then get some tweezers that have been washed in bleach preferably , and pick out the seed and put into new clean paper packets , fold up and put into a container that is air tight and put into fridge for 3 to 4 months for stratification . keep them dry , as wet strat seed in plastic bags or container , can cause fungal infections, and for doing T/c wet seed for 3 or 4 months will be un-sterizable ,(if there is such a word?) doing dry in paper will hold off most contams till your ready , ceph seed can be held this way for several years too , wet seed can not !
if your sowing seed naturally your seed need stratification no matter what you hear! you need it ! while doing T/c its not so important but is takes as long to germinate as if been in strat time , germination in T/c can take up to 3 to 6 months, per soaking and sterilization will make it shorter time , but it dose vary a lot, with light temps and climate , if you use artificial light it can help with germination times and when you sow, eliminating season sowing as you need for natural out door germination of ceph seed , avoid getting seed to hot for germination , seed will not germinate if temps go over 30 c surface temps keep them around 2o to 25 c will be best for germination in natural and under lighting .
Interesting point on growing cephs plants , if the temps gets over 30c they stop growing, if they get under 12 c they stop growing , Phill Mann stated the best growing temps for cephs were 20 to 25 c , is when they grew best in the natural habitat and at his home some 3 hrs drive North from Albany, place called Harvey !

If any one have or has other experiences , sure there are many , please put them up ,this is only my experience , dont mean its set in concrete ! except for stratification :)
 
Thanks John! I might try growing some ceph from seeds... :)
Do you find the germination time to be as long as 3 months in average? Even after cold stratification?
 
Hi Wil, have had seed germinate in 2 to 3 weeks and seed germinate 6 months later and long like the next season ,no real ways to tell sorry , thinking it just climate and conditions at the time, have no explanation !

if you do sow seed though and it don't germinate in the elected time you think is reasonable , don't through the seed away or the pot you have them in keep , them from molding up or getting fungal's in the winter time like keep them under the bench in a dry cool place and represent them the early next spring, have had the germinate the next season many times ,you just have to stop dead and mold or fungal attacks or there dead, if they turn black its gone , if the keep's the light colour there good as far as i seen , dont mistake darkening of the husk for black !
j
 
My first seed set germinated without stratification. At 20 C° under artificial light in a plastik box with closed lid. I wathed it every other day under a steroscope. Very slow growers.
My mistake was to let them too long under this conditions so the substrate (sand /peat from a sand pit) got too hard.
Could not get them out easy, so I took pieces of the sandy mixture with moss and planted them in one of my pots. To make it worse I left them outside because I had to leave them for three weeks in care of some friend which does not know a thing about plants.
When I came back none were to be seen above ground. But still wet.
Weeks later some appeared again with tiny leafs and traps. Lost probably 2 third of them. Only the hardy...
 
Hey gang,

I would like to share my new experience with ceph seeds with you. Last summer, I harvested ceph seeds from my own plant for the first time. Near 50 seeds. I didn't want to put all my eggs in the same basket so I sowed half immediately. 12 seeds on LFS and 12 seeds on LFS innoculated with mycorhize and put the pots under my grow light. I already have success in the past with ceph seeds sowing them in November on my windowsill. I also readed somewhere that ceph seeds sowed at different time would sprout at the same time. So, I sowed the remaining half in November on LFS. Yesterday, I found that the seeds sowed last summer started to sprout :) I'm really happy ! There's less weeds and algae in the pot innoculated with mycorhize. The seeds I sowed in November have not sprouted yet. I'll give them a week or two before raising any conclusion but at the moment, I think that ceph seeds seem to need to lay a minimum of time on the media before sprouting and that sowing them just before the anticipated sprouting moment doesn't seem to work in my condition.

I didn't remember I still have hot New Zealand LFS hiding somewhere so I use standard LFS this time and I have more algae in my pot. The trick with ceph seeds is to be able to keep the LFS from over growing them and prevent algae ... I really recommand using New Zealand LFS out of the package. The time it will take to come back to life should be enough for the seeds to sprout and I never had algae, moss or mould problem with this media.

Cheers.
 
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