go buy a bottle of liquid smoke

Thanks, bambi. I bought a bottle of liquid smoke--it's something like Wright's hickory flavored--I'll correct this if I'm wrong. It was about $4.50 or so, and I found it with the barbecue sauces, not the spices. It smells pretty foul.

I'm going to use it with Protea seeds of an unknown species/hybrid, and I'll compare with soaking in a solution made by passing water (from a mister) through freshly burned leaves (Liquidamber and Podocarpus). These are diluted at very roughly 1:20 for the liquid smoke 1:3 for the ash water. Unfortunately I don't have a water only control--I don't know germination efficiency and I don't want to waste seeds. I'll get back if there's anything interesting.

The rains have started here and it's cooling down--hopefully it's not too cold for germination.