Gardening Q&A: Steps yield magnolia from seed

Q:How do I germinate my magnolia seeds?

A:The Southern magnolia has lustrous, dark-green foliage and large, creamy white, beautifully fragrant flowers, followed by the rose-red aggregate fruit that splits open in fall to reveal bright red seeds. It is this seed that probably sparks the curiosity of many a gardener to try their hand at propagation. Some advantages of raising magnolias from seed are:

•It is cheaper than raising them by vegetative means.

•It generally gives fast establishment and good growth.

•It produces a vigorous root system.

A disadvantage is that they generally take longer to flower than vegetatively raised plants. They may also not be true-to-type; in other words, they will have different characteristics from the parent plant due to open pollination.

Magnolia seeds are gathered in fall as soon as possible after the fruit is ripe, when the red seeds are visible all over the fruit. The outer seed coat, red fleshy pulp, must be removed before the seed is stratified.

Soak the seed for one or two days in warm or hot water to which a detergent has been added to remove any remaining traces of the oily film that protects them from drying out.

Separation of good, well-filled seeds from the empty ones easily can be accomplished while they still are in water. The good seeds (without the red pulp) sink, while the empty seeds and the pulp float. After cleaning, the seeds should either be sown immediately in fall or prior to spring planting, stratified for two to three months at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you plan to sow them in the fall, this can be done two ways: sowing them directly into the soil in a well-prepared spot in the garden, or sowing them thinly in a seed tray or similar container filled with a well-drained potting medium.

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