Re: Clarke Brunt's Darlingtonia seed

Clarke Brunt (clarke@brunt.demon.co.uk)
Sat, 17 Feb 1996 19:53:02 +0000

On 16 Feb 96 at 23:24, Sean Barry wrote:

> I must add my testimonial to the others' about Clarke's generous gift of
> Darlingtonia seeds--

Two more people have written to me recently asking if I still have
any seed - no, I sent it all out. We'll see again in Autumn assuming
I get flowers again.

I keep thinking though: I only have two adult Darlingtonia, and they
had a few seed capsules on each. This was enough for 29 portions of
seed which looked small at the time, but probably had 100-200 seeds
in each. There must be lots of other people growing Darlingtonia and
potentially producing seed, which seems to grow readily when sown
fresh (so far I have failed to germinate commercial seed at all).
There must be a lot more swapping of seed we can all do. I guess
the problem is that while sending out a few packets is no trouble,
and not worth asking money for, the more you do, the more commmercial
it would have to become.

I wonder just how old commercial seed is? Perhaps I'll have to
experiment with how long you can store Darlingtonia. I'd have thought
that seed collected in maybe October in the N. hemisphere and sent
out within a few months should be OK.

Regarding another post about seeds being squashed in the post: I've
certainly experienced this, and Sarracenia seem quite vulnerable.
I've had squashed Cactus seed too. Reputable suppliers seem to use
a small box these days. I wanted to keep the Darlingtonia under 10
grams (to save on postage), so I used a piece of cardboard with
a hole cut in it for the seeds - the idea was that the cardboard
would take the squashing of the post service machines. It sounds like
most of the packages survived OK.

-- 
Clarke Brunt (clarke@brunt.demon.co.uk)