That's great. I like manzanita too.

If you don't get help here, you could ask on the Native Plant Forum or even call the non-profit Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, CA to see if someone would be available there to talk with.

Good luck, hope they sprout.

This is a good thread at the CNPS Discussion Forum...

Joe

Here is a link that might be useful: ManzanitaSeedGermination

You might take a look at Dara Emery's "Seed Propagation of Native California Plants." Manzanitas have a reputation for being hard to propagate. I know, you see all of those millions of plants, dominating huge areas, and you think it must be ridiculously easy. The big table in Emery's book repeats a recommendation from another source (US Forest Service) to soak the seeds in concentrated sulfuric acid for several hours before sowing. Elsewhere the book recommends fire, saying, "Even using this treatment, manzanita (Arctostaphylos) seeds require a minimum of two months to germinate." (p.18). Fire is an important part of manzanita life, and when you look closely at a natural community, you'll see that most of them are the same age, indicating they germinated at the same time -- after a fire. Before putting a lighter to your seeds, read Emery's book and/or Marjorie Schmidt's "Growing California Native Plants" for suggestions on how to do it.

The CNPS link is dead now, but the original content is still available at the Internet Archive.

Here is the text of one of the replies from March 2000:

• A few years ago, one of my colleagues at Yerba Buena Nursery grew a lovely stand of Arctostaphylos canescens by burning the seed flat.
  
  You take a wooden seed flat plastic would melt, cover sides with aluminum foil, fill with seed medium, plant the seeds I think she left them on top of the medium, water them in, then cover top with 3 inches of flammable material.
  
  I can't recall what she used - might well have been dried pine needles. Then you set the flat on fire and let it burn down. You will be left with a bunch of ashes covering the seeds.
  
  Leave the ashes there, water the flat at regular intervals just like any othe seed flat. This worked very well with A. canescens, and should work with other fire-dependent species. The resulting plants grew quickly for a manzanita, and looked better than cutting-grown plants.

We visit Idyllwyld. our local mountain resort often. and there is a line where the Manzanitas start. It's often burned there. Seems to me like they need some nights of freeze too. It snows every winter. We had a couple on our property, rumor has it, but the idiot who built this house destroyed them. Sad. It does freeze here annually, but only a few days now and then. Not enough to kill a Mango or Macadamia and the citrus all survive.