Growing trifoliate maples from seed

General Gardening
#1

A couple years ago, I tried growing Acer triflorum from seed. Out of about an ounce of seed, I got exactly TWO seedlings - one died the first season, and the other one runted out and died the second season. Some type of insect or fungal pathogen (never figured out what) kept zapping back new growth and eventually it gave up and never leafed back out.

I want to try one more time - this time, hoping to get a larger quantity of seedlings, and rather than containers, I may try them in the ground to see if that helps.

I am looking for Acer griseum and Acer triflorum seed - Sheffield’s has both (older seed) and Schumacher’s has triflorum, but if anyone has fresh seed they can share, I’d be interested as well.

I’ve been reading that part of the issue (in addition to low viability to start with) is the very hard, woody pericarp is hard to penetrate (which is why a warm strat + cold stratification is recommended), but that if you can crack that and extract the actual embryo inside, you can skip the warm stratification, go straight to cold stratification, and get better germination rates.

The problem for me is getting the seeds ‘opened’ without crushing the entire thing. I tried with pliers last time and ended up just obliterating the embryo as well.

Has anyone done this, and do you have a technique to share?

#2

Don’t cold strat. the embryo Bryan. Go directly to planting.

My buddy’s done nigrum/saccharum & truncatum this way & he says they grow “pretty quickly” (in a week or two appx.)

Those are easy to extract embryo’s from the soft pericarp. Neither he nor I have a technique for trifoliates to break thru those, cleanly.

Dax

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#3

I used to sow them many years ago. Extracting the seed is a good way to do it cause many fruits are empty. Soaking the nutlets (samaras) in water for a few days will soften them up. Then you can open them up using vice or whatever instrument at hand.

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#4

I can germinate and grow the saccharum complex maples (saccharum, nigrum, leucoderme) like nobody’s business.

The trifoliates are my nemesis.

#5

It’s time to tame that tiger, B!

Dax

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