It will take two to three weeks for the seeds of Vriesea saundersii to sprout, but actually it is the most "dynamic" phase of growing vrieseas from seed :-)
Tomas

If they sprout I'll be happy. My last Vriesea seeds didn't so I'm eager to prove it was the seeds, not me. These are just practice seedlings until I get some crossing skills.

Sometimes it's hard to see Vrieseas even when they do germinate. They come out much smaller than Neo seedlings or other members of that tribe. My experience is that often I'll see germination but when I check back later they're gone. I don't know if they're damping off or if slugs are getting them, but they are very tiny and vulnerable for a very long time and don't start putting on any real growth for about a year. Ignoring them may not be the best way to go.

Seeds from the seed bank are often too old to be viable, and many times turn out to be not what they say they are anyway. It's a nice idea but I wouldn't trust anything from that source.

Lisa, thanks for the warning. I think you posted a pic a while back of a Vriesea that you grew from BSI seed and it was nice, but not at all what it claimed to be.

Can anyone tell me the best way to get rid of the sticky fluid that is on Neo seed? And if I should even bother?

The seeds I've gotten from the BSI Seed Fund are relatively clean and don't stick together. The seeds from my selfed Neo that I washed once are still sticky. I sewed some seeds right away and they were quite wet and didn't stick together so it was easy to deploy them. But if I want to save some for a while, I guess you need to clean them well to keep stuff from growing on them. High Fructose Bromeliad Syrup can't be a good storage medium.

I usually don't bother cleaning them if I'm going to sow them right away, but you're right, they do clump together, so maybe I should. I always tend to sow them too close together anyway-- bad habit. If I'm drying them I squeeze the berries into a jar of water, slosh them around and pour off the liquid with the fibrous floaty bits, fill it up and do it again, then dry them overnight on a paper towel and scrape them off into an envelope.

I know other people soak them longer or dry them longer, but that seems like kind of a waste of time to me. Mo' fresh, mo' fast, mo' bettah!

Lisa, that is exactly what I did. Sloshed once and they were still quite sticky. Sloshed twice and still sticky, but doable. I guess I'll try using some warm water next time. I'm tempted to use a bit of detergent.

Some of my early batches of Neo seed were prone to fungus attack, so now I do clean all my Neo seed before I use it.

Here is the process I follow:-

I squeeze the seed from the ripe berry into a small glass jar filled with luke warm water, then add about a teaspoon of disinfectant. This water, seed, disinfectant solution is stirred for a bit, then tipped thru' a fine mesh sieve.

The sieve is then tipped upside down, and whacked down over a piece of A4 paper. With just the right amount of 'whack' force all the seed will end up on the paper, and you wont break the the sieve! (I've gone thru a few)

Spread out the seed over the paper, and then leave over night to dry. Often there is still a bit of that sticky goo around the seed, but that will just dry out. The next morning, I'll put a fold thru' the middle of the paper, scrape the seed into the middle (as by now it has dried & stuck to the paper)then use the fold to tip the now clean & dry seed into the seed raising mix, or into a bag for storage.

Once the seed has been tipped onto the seed raising mix, I'll give it a spray with a half strength fungicide, then leave it to germinate.

Have never had any issues with fungus attack using this 'clean & dry' seed.

Devo, what potting medium do you use, or did you use when you had fungus problems? My fresh seeds on sphagnum mix seem to pop up too fast to get fungus. I did get fungus once on some big aechmea seeds from the BSI Seed Fund.

I originally used a standard potting mix, which was sterlised in boiling water, but now use a 50/50 mix of perlite & palm peat which works well with all brom seed. I did find that pure sphagnum was OK, but was a problem when it dried out, as it was very hard to re-wet. With my indoor set up the little plastic seed raising containers do dry out, especially when the seedlings are a few months old, and not getting sprayed each day. The perlite / palm peat mix does not dry out as fast.

I now put any seed thru' that 'clean & dry' method, even the Vriesea, & Alcantarea seed. Once fungus does get away in a batch of seedlings, it's often hard to control, & does knock the seedlings back, so a quick clean before I sow the seed is worth the little bit of extra time.

Devo, what disinfectant do you use? And, if you don't mind, where do you get your seeds?

I guess I should add that unless you're using sphagnum as a medium, you pretty much have to wash and/or dry your seeds. I pack the sphagnum moss down hard and it binds together so that you can squeeze a berry right onto it without disturbing the surface; that's why I like to use it. After I squeeze out the berry I shoot the surface at close range with a hand sprayer to break up the clumps. You can't do that with a peat-lite mix or you'll bury the seeds.

Awhile back someone gave my husband a sample box of compacted sphagnum pellets. They were great! You soak them in water and they expand, and the moss is very finely cut and clean. I used those for several years but now I've run out and nobody seems to know where to get them. Anybody else know of this product? The baled moss is more of a pain in the butt because it is so coarse and has twigs and straw and whatnot in it. I end up spending a lot of time trying to chop it fine with my clippers, and it's still not as good.

The disinfectant I use is "Pine O Cleen", I think it is an international product. Most of my seed is from my own hybridizing now, but I have got the occassional batch from our club seed bank, as they get some interesting stuff from time to time. I am a member of BSI, but have not obtained any of their seed to date.

Lisa, do you find your seedlings grow better / faster in sphagnum...? The bale is the normal way we get it here...pure NZ sphagnum, so it is easy to obtain, but like you say is coarse, & got bits & pieces in it. I've not seen the compacted pellets, but did a quick online search...see the link...is this the sort of thing you mentioned...? If so I'll keep an eye out for it, & if I locate some, I may just give it a try.

Here is a link that might be useful: Supersphag

Looks like a similar process was used to make that product, Andrew, but it's a different shape. You'd need an awful lot of those to add up to anything, but it could be the same company that makes them.

Here's what I was using up until just recently. They're like little corks, hard as wood until you soak them. Since I had a limited supply of them I just used it on the surface over either straight perlite or a peat-lite mix. A shallower pan would have worked too, but I just use the pots we have.

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The last picture shows Neo. seedlings at the one month stage.

I don't know if they grow faster or slower on the moss because I've never really tried it any other way. When I spot them off into trays they go into peat-lite and they tend to take off, but that's probably because they suddenly have more space and more food, and they're at the stage to take off anyway.

The moss does tend to grow algae if it stays too wet, but you don't want to let it dry out completely either. As you say, it's a bit hard to remoisten once it's dry. The good thing is that you don't have to worry much about disturbing the seeds when you water. They stay put on this stuff. I guess that's another reason why I don't bother to clean off the sticky stuff. I WANT it to stick to the surface, and I haven't found it any more likely to breed fungus. I do occasionally have fungal problems, but as often as not it's with dried seed.

I use nothing like that.

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Sphagnum peat is not the same as sphagnum moss. Peat is the moss after it's decomposed.

It works. Of course, so does plain old Miracle Grow Potting Mix. I'm not sure which works better at this point, but I've had excellent/100% results with the potting soil and only 90% with the Sphagnum Peat Moss and 0% with plain Sphagnum Moss. Hmmm, why did I stop using Potting Mix?

It is possible to control fungus spread locally with hydrogen peroxid. Few drops will destroy the fungus where they hit. Also seedlings of common plants do not get hurt when the peroxid is directly applied on them, but I try to avoid it directly on bromeliad seedlings.
Tomas

Lisa Jiffy Pellets sold here in Jan each year by Walmart
here is the phone number 800-283-3400
www.jiffypot.com
or www.ferry-morse.com
I buy a couple hundred each year

Jiffy pots and pellets are peat, HDD. I'm looking for the chopped but undecomposed pure sphagnum moss. I found this page for Supersphag. No pictures, but it sounds like it could be the same thing as in my pics above.

Here is a link that might be useful: Supersphag