protecting seeds for mailing

From: Wim Leys (Wim.Leys@vlm.be)
Date: Mon Feb 16 1998 - 04:10:38 PST


Date: Mon, 16 Feb 1998 13:10:38 +0100
From: Wim Leys <Wim.Leys@vlm.be>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg608$foo@default>
Subject: protecting seeds for mailing

I have send a quite large number of CP seeds over the last years to
people all over the world. Now recently I received two messages from
people whose seeds were crushed during transport, one from Germany
another from the USA.

The strange thing is that in both cases it happened with S. purpurea
seeds. In one case the seeds were send together with Drosophyllum
lusitanicum seeds. Drosophyllum seeds are a lot bigger than Sarracenia
seeds, but they were OK. Drosophyllum seeds are hard as rock, I thought
they would protect the smaller S. seeds, keeping the rollers from
touching them.

Are the rollers used in certain post companies more muscled than in
other ones ?
Is this just a coincidence or should I consider changing the way I
protect seeds ?

This is the way I package seeds :
- put seeds in a little plastic bag, including a paper label, heat seal
the plastic bag (writing on plastic seed bags at the outside is a bad
idea, all too often it is faded away when arriving)
- glue bags on a sheet of thin bubble plastic (not the kind with two
plastic layers with nice round airbags in between) about twice as big as
the envelope, the glue is to keep them from sliding all to one side,
glue opposite sides of bubble plastic together so the result fits in the
envelope.

I have received seeds in good health packaged between paper
handkerchiefs instead of bubble plastic (hi Jens).

Any other suggestions on protecting seeds ?

Kind regards
Wim



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