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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Bald Cypress Seeds

I collected some bald cypress "cones" from some of the trees at Glendower Historic Mansion. The trees were supposedly given to J. Milton Williams by Henry Clay back in the late 1840's. There are three very large trees still there and this year they had "fruit" or cones as they are called. They are not cone shaped at all, but round balls.  Anyway, a branch had fallen off one of the trees during a storm in August and I was able to gather three cones. 

I thought it might be nice to try to grow some trees from the cones so I checked on line for instructions and sure enough there were a couple of sites giving out growing information. They all pretty much agreed so I hope it works.  First I cracked open the cones with a nut cracker - it was easy. Inside were some funny little bits that I think were the seed, they were flat sided, not round. They had sticky, pine smelling stuff on them. I planted them in layers of dampened peat moss and stashed the whole thing in a plastic box with a tight fitting lid and put the whole thing in the back of the refrigerator. I put the date on the box and a reminder that in 60 days I need to take them out of the refrigerator and plant them in peat pots. Hope I remember.

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