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A Crash Course In Germinating Darlingtonia?

I have many seeds and reading online has only made me more nervous about starting this plant! Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
 
pm dj she has luck with them in portland
 
This is just my experience in my conditions and others may have different ways of germinating these with equal results. I only have experience with natural stratification. You can stratify these artificially and others on here are much better equipped than I on how to do that.

I fill a pot to about 1/2-1 inch below the top with 50/50 peat/sand or peat/perlite and put a thin layer of cut-up dead LFS on top and spread the seeds over that. The LFS helps keep the seed from washing out during winter rains. I keep the pots in a tray of water no more than half way up the pot. The seed need a cold wet stratification period, so I sow the seed in the fall and leave outside to stratify naturally. I get excellent germination rate. After germination, I leave them in that pot where they get about 4 hours of morning sun and bright light the rest of the day until the following spring, and then separate them out and put into separate pots with live moss top dressing, the bog, or my pond "fen," where they then get 6+ hours of full sun.

This year I set up some pots with pea gravel top dressed with live moss with the water level at the top of the gravel, and they seem to be liking that with a water change every couple of days and top watering once a day. I have to cut the moss back often though or they take over the young plants.

They do best if you can set up some kind of system with a constant flow of water through their roots, but they do okay by just top watering a couple times a day with cool water. The important thing is not letting the roots overheat and giving them the cool oxygenated water they need. A top dressing of live moss works wonders in preventing overheating and also having them in a large pot; terra cotta is a good choice to help keep the roots from overheating while still providing the sun they need.
 
Stratification? Really?
I sow 10 darlingtonia seeds on 23/07/2012 without stratification.

2 weeks after(!!) I have 6 germinated seeds. In the next 2-3 weeks, im confident for the rest :)
2 weeks is very fast for darlingtonia seeds.

Maiden
 
From my experience, seeds haven't wanted to sprout wihtout a 4 week startification. I found that 6 weeks seems to be too long too. Then, bright sun and a fungus free environment are required, and they seem to like live sphagnum to grow on.
 
I have had success with placing the seed on the surface of a 1:1 compost of peat or milled sphagnum to horticultural sand. The pots were sealed in zip-lock bags and refrigerated for three weeks. Germination occurred approximately two weeks afterwards.

Patience is a virtue with Darlingtonia, since it takes years to produce a reasonably-sized plant . . .
 
I've never gotten germination from seeds that were not stratified. I've tried fresh seed that had never been refrigerated. Seed that had been refrigerated for at least 3 months. Field collected seed and seed from cultivation.

4 weeks stratification and germination beginning at 10-11 days after sowing. 85% or higher germination rates after 1 month.

The unstratified seed just sat there. After three months of no germination I put the pots into the refrigerator for 4 weeks and then back to my normal germination conditions (ambient room temperatures, bagged and under lights). First germination started after 11 days. About 70-75% germination rate after 1 month.

I've stratified the seed in damp paper towels, a pinch of chopped live Sphagnum moss, chopped dead long fiber sphagnum, and in pots on media of 60:40 perlite and long fiber sphagnum. Makes absolutely no difference in germination times and rates.
 
First time I tried darlingtonia from seed I placed about 50 seeds in a 4 inch pot on 50/50 peat/perlite and sprayed them with a fungicide treatment, covered them with a plastic bag, then I stuck them in the fridge and forgot all about them. Four months later, I gave them a check, most of the seed had successfully germinated and seemed to be doing fairly well. On the other hand I've tried unstratified and had no luck at all.
 
  • #11
I think Not a Number has provided very useful data.
 
  • #12
Many growers particularly in Europe report germination without stratification. I've just never have been able to germinate them in this fashion. There must be some factor in play other than the age of the seeds. Perhaps the populations in Europe (and Canada) have just been selected to not require stratification. Or these growers are doing something I'm not condition-wise. I did not compare highland populations vs lowland/intermediate. These were seed from cultivated plants of unknown origin and lowland/intermediate locations (Gasquet, CA).
 
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