Abstract
ON regarding seeds of our hardy trees which are sown in autumn, and which do not germinate before the return of spring, we feel forced to admit that however the other conditions may vary, the cause which causes the germination in the commencement of the fine weather is the rise in the temperature, and one is equally tempted to think that the higher the temperature, as long as this rise does not equal that which would destroy the seeds, the more active and pronounced would be the germination. Nevertheless this is not by any means always the case, at any rate in the seeds of the walnut and almond trees. Anxious to germinate some of these seeds in winter, Prof. H. Baillon thought to obtain a more rapid development in a warm house, in which the temperature varied within the twenty-four hours from 15° to 25° (59 – 77 F.), than in a cool house in which during the same time the temperature varied between 5° and 15° (41 – 59 F.), but the trial proved a failure. In the cool-house, in the course of six weeks, the walnuts had stems of about two decimetres in height, whereas the most advanced of those in the warm house had only stems of from two to three centimetres in the fully developed leaves. The experiment was several times repeated. The same quality of earth, and the same quantity of water was used, and the results were the same. After a space of two and a half months the greater part of the nuts sown in the warm house had only roots occasionally well developed, but little or no caulome outside the fruit. Moreover, the greater part of the walnuts which germinated in a house, where there was good bottom-heat, had roots which did not behave like those of walnuts, germinating in the cool house and without bottom heat, the tap root of the latter grew well in length before any egress of the plumule, whereas the tap-roots of those grown in the warm house were early arrested in their development, and this through growing in a very friable soil, consisting of moist sawdust, much less resisting than the sand or the earth of the cool-house, in which the tap-roots developed so well. This was very nearly the same with the almonds, and would seem to point to the fact that in the case of some seeds there is no advantage to be gained by forcing them. Some, like Eranthis hiemalis, at whatever period they are sown in the open air, will develop themselves at a fixed time, as it does in January (H. Baillon in No. 39 of the Bulletin Periodique de la Soc Linn, de Paris, January, 1882.)
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The Influence of Temperature on Certain Seeds . Nature 26, 22 (1882). https://doi.org/10.1038/026022a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/026022a0