Northwest Palms

Germinating Cycas petraea?

Has anyone tried this before? I just got my Cycas petraea seeds in the mail and would like to have a high success rate from these. I was wondering if there's a preferred technique to germinating these. I've never germinated a cycad before but I figure it's probably similar to germinating palm seeds. Would a few weeks of cold stratification be a good idea for these seeds?

Also I was wondering of the following seeds which would be more successful with cold stratification:

Sabal mexicana
Sabal minor
Brahea armata
Phoenix acaulis
Serenoa repens
Trachycarpus oreophilus
Trachycarpus nanus

From a bit of experimenting before I found that Sabal minor had better results being placed for germination immediately without stratification. Trachycarpus species benefited with a couple weeks stratification. And Phoenix species germinated better without stratification. I'm not entirely convinced with my results because I only used 5 seeds under each technique so it may well have been a fluke.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Eric

The following thread was started by Eric on December 30, 2005 at 6:40 pm PST

Eric,
Check out the link, he'll tell you all about it.

http://www.plantapalm.com/vce/horticulture/seeds.htm

The above followup was added by Scott R on January 14, 2006 at 8:00 pm PST.