Pine seeds

Is there any way to tell if pine seeds are any good before planting them? I worked my fingers to the bone extracting about thirty Pinus elliottii seeds from a few cones and some of the seeds have tiny little pin holes in them. What would cause that? The cones were partially opened, but still closed enough to hold the seeds.

I'm not familiar with that pine, but some insects (especially weevils) are notorious for drilling holes in seeds and sucking the juice out....

If there are holes in the seed (and the seed so stuck in to the cones that it was hard work getting them out), then they're no good, they've been eaten by insects. Healthy seeds fall out easily, and don't have holes in. Sorry!

Otherwise, to distinguish between pine seeds with no insect damage, fertile seeds are blackish, and infertile seeds are paler, greyish.

Resin

They are probably no good then. Oh'well

The reason the insect-damaged seeds stick in the cones, is because the insect larvae eat their way through several seeds, mining through the cone to get from one seed to the next. This causes some resin bleeding which acts as a 'glue', and the insect droppings ("frass") also glues the seeds in place somewhat.

Cut one of the seeds with a hole in half, and you'll find it packed inside with brown frass powder.

Resin

Chad--I think they're referred to as frass holes. ;)

Maackia,

That one had the wife calling up the stairs to see what I was laughing about! Good one!

Scott

That was a good one. LOL

Escambia If ya want I got about 40 seeds, you can have, just dmail me. I had put down some ground cloth and the storm we had last weekend sent some of the pine seeds down on it. Your welcome to them if you like. I feel for ya after all that work. I sitting here trying to take apart a plateful of Hemlock cones. They are so tiny to work with and though open are refusing to give up there seeds.

Starlight, do you know if they are Pinus elliottii (slash) or Pinus taeda (loblolly), or even better Pinus palustris (longleaf) ? Unfortunately Pinus taeda is like a buffet to pine beetles here.

Resin.... Thank you for the seed removing tip. My finger tips especially Thank you!

Escambia... Went out to measure needles and check cones and everthing cuz I have all three here. Got a ladder so I could climb up high enough to check the cones. This tree had some lower branches. The ones I gathered the seed up from is unfortunately. P. taeda. : ( The cones are sessile.

Now the back right section has both Slash and Longleaf, but there is no way for me to get up that high to get at the cones. The cones are over 50' in the air. Checked some of the cones on the ground, but they already empty. We got more rain and storms coming. I can try and put some mat down around those trees and see if I can catch the cones for ya. Across the street has some P. palustris too in his field, so I will go check his trees and see if I can find ya some good cones with seeds. Oodles of the trees here, just need to figure out how to get the cones.

If I could get my hands on some P. palustris seeds that would be great.

Escambia. Dmail me yoru addy. Got you some P. elliottii seeds today. Went to the little Slash Pine grove and managed to find a few cones that hadn't totally dehissed their seeds.

Darn, now I see I forgot ya wante d some P. palustris too. Will go see if I can find ya some of them now. But definately got ya Slash seeds.