Are they fresh at this time of the year? You need to plant these soon after maturity. The situation can be controlled by planting them in pots. But you would definitely want to leave them outside, exposed to outdoor temperatures in order to get them to sprout.

I just picked the drying seed pod off the tree with 2 seeds in it last Tuesday. I need to know what kind of soil [I am potting up lots of daylily seeds now, and use Jiffy seed starting mix] to pot them in. Do I give them cold storage in the fridge? I use a hydrogen peroxide/distilled water mix to get daylily seeds to germinate - would this be beneficial? Or soaking in plain water? I dont know anything about this type of seed so any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

I'm not familiar with this species of Aesculus , but the ones that grow around these parts, the seed can be sowed immediately after harvest with no other treatment required. I would suggest finding a deep narrow pot - maybe 12-15 inches deep - as the tap root can become rather long quickly. If available, I would mix in some fine pine bark to your Jiffy mix to provide better drainage.
Marshall

peat mixes for annuals and perennials.. holds too much water for trees ...

either buy a bag of cactus mix ...

of do what mr g says ...

if it were me.. i would have potted them last fall.. when they were ripe.. and left them out int he cold MI winter.. and they would have sprouted this spring ...

what happened.. hanging on the tree all winter.. in TX.. is unanswerable from me ... sounds to me.. like they could have dried out .. A LOT ...

but what do you have to lose.. pot them.. and cross your fingers....

i would leave the pot in full shade.. but bright light ... do not leave a tree pot in the sun.. you will cook the roots ...

ken

Sounds like you may have seed from Mexican Buckeye(Ungnadia speciosa) a member of the Soapberry family.

Johnny

I suspect conifer is right. Please google it and see if that isn't what you have. BTW if it is, it does very well propagated in greenhouse conditions with excellent germination from freshly gathered seed.

As to true buckeye culture (Aesculus)in general. They all do quite well with inside propagation. Some need cold stratification and some don't depending on what kind of buckeye you are starting. Aesculus pavia will sprout immediately as soon as the pod splits. Ohio buckeye needs cold treatment first.

In fact with aesculus pavia, if in pot, it's pretty susceptible to croaking if overwintered outside in a pot, even with protection. If that doesn't get them, the rodents will. Mine all spend their first year after germination on bench with enough heat to keep above freezing, then acclimated in an unheated perennial house until planting.

Promix/bark base in a tall, narrow pot is fine for the first stage. They make a successful transition to ground when still small. No they do not persist on a tree, buckeyes 'all fall down'. You do want them to contact soil/media as soon as the pod splits. The harder the shell, the harder the germination. I get 100% gemination on them or close to it.

I am going to try to upload a photo I took of the tree - this may not work, I am not proficient at uploading photos....I do plan to germinate them inside or in my greenhouse, so no problem with rodents getting to them. Would love to know exactly what kind of buckeye it is - I was told it was a "pink buckeye".

Here is a link that might be useful:

Trying again....

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Alameda, what you have is a Mexican Buckeye. It's also called a false buckeye. The easiest way to identify it as such is to look at the leaf. False buckeyes have about six pairs of opposing leaflets and a terminal leaf. True buckeyes are palmately compound having five to seven leaflets all radiating from a central point. You are not in error calling it a pink buckeye, since that's one of its common names and that's why really serious tree nerds ususally don't use common names but the binomial.