Viewing post #1013396 by sooby

You are viewing a single post made by sooby in the thread called Starting Daylily seeds.
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Dec 22, 2015 6:08 AM CST
Name: Sue
Ontario, Canada (Zone 4b)
Annuals Native Plants and Wildflowers Keeps Horses Dog Lover Daylilies Region: Canadian
Butterflies Birds Enjoys or suffers cold winters Garden Sages Plant Identifier
As far as I can tell they don't look too flat to germinate. Since they are already hydrated from the peroxide maybe put them in the fridge in a container with a dry piece of kitchen paper towel. Or, better in my opinion, plant them in damp vermiculite in a pot, put the pot in a plastic bag and put that in the fridge. Give them four weeks in the fridge, then take them out.

Seed dormancy prevents seeds from germinating all at once or germinating before winter which could kill young seedlings. It's a survival mechanism, staggered germination increases the odds that at least some young seedlings will encounter good growing conditions. Others germinate once they have been damp chilled because that tells them they've been through a winter and now it is a nice safe warm spring. So when we do the damp chilling and then move them to room temperature we're tricking them into "thinking" they've done winter and now it's spring and safe to germinate. If you don't leave them in the fridge long enough they might not count it as winter.

There are other seed dormancy mechanisms and ways of breaking them too but to concentrate on daylilies, they seem to have staggered dormancy, i.e. they germinate erratically unless we do something to break the dormancy (like damp chilling). If they aren't tricked into thinking they've done winter and it's now spring they may still germinate but it can take weeks or months for some, while others will germinate quickly. That way if the early ones get killed by something, there are still more waiting to take their place. Seed dormancy is very common in nature but not so much in the packets of seeds that you buy in a store - those may have had seed dormancy bred out. Daylily breeders may eventually do the same thing if they only keep the first seedlings to come up in a batch that was not stratified and discard the stragglers.

Just be glad you're not hybridizing chickweed, its seeds can be dormant for 20 years Hilarious!

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