Hi Marcia,

Can you take a picture and post it? I've grown Cimicifuga many times from seed and could tell you what it is. I've had surprises like yours too where something was suppose to need cold treatment and it didn't need it. Did you use GA-3? Did you store the seed in the refrigerator? Is it the seed that you tried from last year or a new batch?

I'll take a picture today and post it for you. This was last year's seed (either from you or Gardens North), and i didn't use anything special or store it in the fridge.

It might be hard to get a good pic of the seedlings, as they're very fine and grass-like now. Needle-like might be a better description! But i'll try later. Dh is building some lunch so i'm going to log off soon. :)

Here's the picture of the seedlings. I've left it big because they're hard to see otherwise:
{{gwi:727446}}

It's still hard to see! But you can notice the little green hairs poking up all over. So... what d'you think?

Marcia, the C. foetida that I sowed were from the GN April seed sale last year, so no they are not fresh, fresh, fresh.

Same here, I've had many pop up surprises in my sowing experiments, my goodness I like that when that happens, especially if it were a Cimicifuga! Remember last year, I had to attend to all those Alchemilla mollis seedlings indoors till it was warm enough to take them out to the greenhouse?

From your photo, IÂd say its too early yet to tell? Grass like, thin green hairs tells me it may be a weed, but like I said I canÂt tell from your photo (dark) so I would get them under cool lights as close as possible with touching the seedling, I'm sure in a weekÂs time or so, you'll be able to tell if its a weed or an actually Cimi seedling ;)

Why this happens....
This is what JL Hudson says,

Dormancy is highly variable. Sometimes a seed collected in the warm lowlands will germinate readily, but the same species collected at a high elevation will need cold. Dormancy even varies between individual plants at the same site, and varies with weather before harvest and conditions of storage after harvest.

Many seeds have internal clocks, and give much higher germination at certain times of the year, regardless of the treatment given.

Sharon

Hi Marcia,

Although the seedlings are very young, I don't think they are cimicifuga but wait another 10 days or so and if they don't grow compound leaves then you'll know for sure. Cimicifuga is a difficult plant to germinate because it usually requires 2 warm-cold-warm cycles and it's often the same with Adlumia.

The way that I work with Cimicifuga is that I take the seeds put them into moist sand in a Ziplock bag for 3 months inside. After that, I put the Ziplock bag in the fridge for another 3 months and then I sow them into trays. If they donÂt germinate, I would then repeat the whole thing but outside with wintersowing. I donÂt think it matters if the seed is 1 or 2 years old either because IÂve germinated Cimicifuga seed (C. racemosa) that was 4 years old but I also keep unsown perennial seeds in the refrigerator. Cimicifuga is one of those plants that probably does best with fall sowing as opposed to winter sowing. After reading quite a few of the threads on this forum and the Winter Sowing forum, I am getting the impression that winter sowing works best for plants that donÂt need a moist warm-cold-warm cycle to germinate and that it would probably be faster to fall sow them..

Sharon, you are right about variance in germination since I've had a lot of seedlings germinate that needed a cold treatment too. Yesterday I looked into my own recent sowings and I saw 2 varieties germinated that I intended to wintersow but since they required a 6 week warm period, I was waiting. The Fremontodendron and the Zauschneria germinated in 2 days! But this is Jelitto seed which for me, provides the best quality perennial seed and thatÂs why IÂm willing to spend the Âbig bucksÂ.

These were sown in one of those rectangular juice containers. so it was difficult to get a good picture. The seedlings are about an inch long now, no sign of compound leaves. I don't have my lights set up, so they'll just stay in a window for now.

Since i'm using a seed-starting mix, should i contact the company (Schultz) and complain about the weeds? Today i seeded some datura and took petunia cuttings, but used a different bag of soil. We'll see what happens there.

Marilena, you're dedicated! All that sounds too fussy for me. :) Maybe i'll end up buying a cimicifuga plant after all this!

Hey Marcia,

Alot of soilless mixes are terrible quality. I bought some at one of the box stores at a reduced price and it was full of weeds. I think the Schultz brand is expensive though, so you should call them and let them know that there are weed seeds in their mix.

Don't give up on the Cimicifuga because I do think it will germinate for you. Cimicifugas are so beautiful they are worth the trouble. Hillside Black Beauty is my personal favorite because it has such beautiful foliage.

I used Schultz brand all last year and had no trouble. Hopefully, it will be just this one bag. The rest of the bag is in winter sown containers, so i may see how well the weeds winter sow! I will contact Schultz, though, and let them know. Maybe i'll get a free bag out of them!