Thanks for the replies.
I want to try germinating black mulberry, Morus nigra. I came across a
small tree in full fruit, many years ago. The fruits are like
loganberries, very black and absolutely delicious, but very staining
if you get the juice on your hands or clothing, IIRC.
Since posting here, I've done a bit more research on how to germinate
the seed, and found this: 'Breaking seed dormancy in Black Mulberry',
https://abcbot.pl/pdf/47_2/023-26.pdf which looked on the nail. I got
some gibberellic acid solution from the Amazon link Jeff supplied, and
as he says, everything is in Chinese. No way of knowing what
concentration it is. The only vaguely understandable thing was a
little label on the cap which gives a date 2023/06/12, but whether
that's a manufacturing date or a 'best before' date, and whether the
format is YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY,DD/MM, I've no way of knowing at the
moment. Hang on, Google tells me that China mostly uses YYYY/MM/DD, so
that's at least one uncertainty removed.
I do know a chap that I see about once a week, who was born in Hong
Kong, but whether his family came to the UK before or after he learnt
to read, I'll have to ask him. He'll certainly need good eyesight -
the printing on the bottle is tiny!
In order to get at least a rough idea of solids content of the
brownish liquid in the bottle, I measured it by weighing a few drops
(I have a reasonably accurate digital scale, 0-500g to 2 decimal
places, and a set of precision calibration weights, so I was fairly
confident in the accuracy of the scales), and then gently evaporating
the drops to dryness. It turned out to be about 60% weight/weight.
(If that's approximately correct and the bottles are all much the same
concentration, Jeff I think you made up your solution too weak.)
I shall use that figure to make up a few hundred mls of soaking
solution at say 1000 mg/litre. If it's not exactly correct, it won't
matter too much anyway, as there seems plenty of leeway in the
concentration to use, as long as it's not too strong. Soak the seed
for 24 four hours, strain off, rinse off the excess acid, mix the
seeds into a poly bag of damp peaty compost and stratify by storing in
the fridge at about 4°C for three months, then put in my propagator at
25°C as per that article, and see what happens (if anything!). But I
shan't use all my seed, just in case nothing happens, so I can try
something else, peroxide perhaps, or stratification alone.
--
Chris
Gardening in West Cornwall, very mild, sheltered
from the West, but open to the North and East.