Propagation: frustration over sterile seeds - advice? Jap. Maple., 1 by johnnyvino

johnnyvino wrote:
Hey, here's a topic I actually know about. From my extremely first hand experience, there a a couple keys to getting good viable seed from a palmatum. First, if you want the seeds to grow on for grafting, go for small seed, green palmatum. The small seeds actually graft much easier than the large seed, for what reason, I don't know, but all of my customers who graft swear by it. Second, if you aren't picking a straight green palmatum, you will have a hard time finding good seed. A cultivar or sport is a genetic variation of the green or red seedling, they typically don't produce good seed and more than likely will not grow true to the tree it came from. They like to revert back to straight green or red palmatum, that's why there's so many palmatum varieties, it's unstable. If you want good seed, cut the seed before you start picking, and if the cut is bad, go for another tree and save your time. 90% cut is not uncommon on green palmatum. The best time to pick is after the seed stem dries, that way you know the seed is fully charged. The easy way to do it is wait for the leaves to fall and pick whats left on the tree, it will normally hang for a while and a lot of the blanks will fall off in the mean time. Good luck.