Since last year Ive tried to germinate field maple with absolutely no success. Soaked the seed in hot water ( i let the water cool), stratified for 8 months, and none out of 100 viable seeds germinated. Planting outside in the fall isnt a good option as my climate is not cold enough in winter to satisfy prechilling requirements. Anyone have an effective way to germinate these seeds? best time to collect... time for stratification, etc. I know my european friends here know exactly how to grow these things! @AlainK @LoverOfMaples @emery
My first thought is to question how you know that you have had viable seeds. Possibly you are not gathering truly viable seeds All maples make samaras independent of pollination. The nutlets will be hollow if the flowers were not pollinated. If you haven't already done so, I suggest that you cut a few nutlets in half and see if they are hollow. I have an landscape planted acer griseum that makes tons of samara every season. The nutlets are always empty because there isn't a pollinator nearby.
i cut like 10 of them and they had a brown seed inside. the tree was surrounded by the same species, and was heavily fruiting. but I stored the seeds in the fridge (dry) for quite a bit, but still, the germination percentage is horrendously low, i had a better time with acer griseum!
I have not; Griseum for the reason already given, compestre is unusual here and I passed on acquiring the one I saw at a landscape nursery. I have grown a. shirasawanum and palmatum from seed, however. But it was about a decade ago. What I recall is immediately soaking seeds and putting them on damp paper toweling, into a zip-lock bag (left open or unzipped) and into my refrigerator. After 8 weeks I would take them out of the refrigerator for a day or two, pot up those that had sprouted. The unsprouted were left on the paper toweling, and put back in the fridge, in the unzipped bag, for another two weeks. Rinse and repeat until it seemed futile to continue. I tried some other species subsequently and found Deno's Seed Germination Theory and Practice to be extremely helpful.
griseum is pretty easy to germinate. This guy cracked the code on germinating them: https://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc....aperbark-maple-seeds.98178/page-6#post-401062
??? : I think it's one of the most difficult to germinate : most of the seeds, when collected, are sterile. Other people share this opinion around me. Have you had personally some success with this method? I have no experience about Acer campestre : here, I often find self-sown seedlings in my (small) garden, most of them with slight differences. What's more, they're one of the few species of Acer that can be reproduced by root-cutting. I don't know how well they fare in your climate. Here it's ubiquitous, very frequent in forests. We have a different climate, with some frost in winter.
The problem with Acer griseum is that, like all maples, it is outcrossing - but generally, it is grown as a single specimen tree, with no other individual nearby to outcross with. So all or nearly all the seeds are sterile, unless you are lucky enough to have one (or preferably, more) additional specimen(s) nearby. Then you'll get better seed set. The larger the Acer griseum forest, the better the seed viability you'll get.
Here, in South-West of France, field maple is a very common tree; i have about 20 of them in my garden zone 9b. Birds eat majority of seeds during winter but some seeds germinate easily on the ground each year, in march indeed (and without any requirements). If you plant an other field maple in your yard, you would have numerous viable seeds; In your case (with only one tree), i think that in the way to obtain best results. Best time to collect is october. Time for stratification is 2 month.
