Germination of Cassia Seeds

As I have talked and written to many other Cassia fans about starting and trading seeds, the best piece of advice given to me about Cassia was to soak the seeds overnight before planting. At the time, I was a novice and hadn't even thought of this - and hopefully for someone reading this, it will be a new idea to you as well. But as I now know, since its a member of the pea family, it benefits a great deal by soaking.

In fact, one lady, Carol, wrote this:

Since then, I have tried to follow this advice, although recently, my two Alata babies were just shoved down in the soil and came up a few weeks later. I had some room in a pot and tons of alata seeds, so I tried it without soaking and it worked anyway.

Seed Project # 1

On the other hand, soaking the seeds with a bit of scarification will work wonders. Here's two pics (1) (2) [they open in a new window] of the 1st time I tried 4 different types of Cassia seeds. Initially, one sprouted within 3-5 days, and I got cocky and moved the seed starter tray outside, where I forgot it and it rained... add 80-90+ degree heat and the seeds were kaput!

Scarification is a process of poking, scraping or in my case, I use fine pair of electronic circuit board wire-cutters, to essentially break open the harder shell and allow water in. You can use a needle or pin as well. In the above photos, you can see that some seeds had enlarged significantly, while others were almost the same size before soaking. Its just that no water was able to penetrate some so they didn't enlarge.

Seed Project # 2

In my second attempt I actually soaked the seeds for about 3 days. I did the hot water trick and about 1 hour later had noticed that some were beginning to enlarge. This session involved 5 types of seeds, 6 pieces each. I scarred 3 of each kind and examined again the next morning. Sure enough, some of the non-scarred ones had not grown at all, while all of the scarred ones were quite huge. I cut the small ones and left them another 2 days, mostly because I just didn't have the time to prepare the tray, photograph, etc.

Several days had passed with the seeds submerged and now 13 of the 30 seeds had sprouts in the water.

These things look just like black-eyed pea sprouts we soaked in water as a kid. Its amazing and quite frankly, I'd rather see my seeds sprout then stick them under dirt, than do the reverse and hope its going to grow where I can't see it. Within another week, I've got a total of 22 out of 30 sprouts so far.

Update - January 10, 2000
I've lost every one of my sprouts that were in this project. Several things were done wrong. It is winter here (gee, lows about 50, high was 77 today) and the coolness apparently doesn't make the growing process happen as well - I think I missed this in a high school science class. Some days I would have my tray on a window sill with a cool 65 degree breeze (dropping to 50 at night) blowing across it for a day or two. Then, I'd water maybe 3 times a week and I was using the cardboard, 6-division seed planting trays, the bio-degradable ones you just transplant out into the yard. Thats crap, because they stimulate mildew and that knocked half of them out. Nope, just a great big flop this was. Peter, a professional grower in south Florida said to use sterile seed starter, plastic pots, and keep heating pad under them. Ok, off to try #3.

OOPS - you mean there is a Top and Bottom to a Seed?

When the seeds were in water, the sprout generally came out of a natural point of the sprout. What I didn't realize is that when I planted the seed, the sprout part was the root, not the top, flowering part. I figured I would plant the sprout pointing upwards but in fact it should have pointed down into the dirt. After a week, I reexamined my tray and saw many with the 2 leafed sprouts up an inch or so. Others just had a stem with no leaf or anything, in fact, it almost looked like it was dying on the end. When I was fiddling around with one, I accidentally pulled it up from the dirt and up came the seed husk/shell with the two big leafs. The two were discolored because the leafy part was underground and not getting light. I don't know if these will survive because the part that should have been growing a root into the ground was sticking straight up.

In conclusion, I will leave my seeds soaking for several days next time - maybe even differing amounts - and plant it under dirt after a sprout has emerged from the pea. And next time, I'll plant the sprout pointing INTO the ground to establish the root system.

Types of Cassia
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