Florida's Native Coontie Cycads - Gardener's Tales

 Are we there yet!!!

   How many times, us gardeners with unabated anticipation and have to take 

got to peek on some planted seeds?

Lets see a raise of those green thumbed hands. 

   Twice, in nearly two weeks now, I have it in head to as when my seedlings should sprout.

I only have a vague sense these rather large seeds, fatter than a winter plum pit. Winter being

that they are from across the southern hemisphere and almost as disappointing as the forlorned

winter tomato that deservedly at it's best, some varying degrees of red and that's it. 

These cycad seeds were harvested while walking home from a grocery store, at the dark

of night and announced themselves with a bright flash of pulpy orange. It helped that I was 

close to a road intersection where there was a street light and just happened to have been looking 

down?  Keep in mind I had made a couple of these treks in the dark within days if not a week 

and only now noticed them at the time of they're gathering.

 

   Jumped on the internet and found out how to get these seeds into propagation mode. Don the

rubber gloves, use a sharp object to rid this seed of it's succulent coating, well succulent to some

non human. I bet if I dug deeper on the internet if only to find that these might be edible, not that

 I am suggesting that they are. Surely there has to have been some other human who was the first 

to test these out and may or may not have lived to tell about it.

   A rather lengthy process and stopped at about six of seven seeds.  The remaining unmolested 

seeds sat there for I don't know how much time before stripping some more seeds for when that 

day when that little gardener's voice in my head that gives me a task when to put these seeds in a 

medium and beneficial environment for it's propagation. Not too dry, nor too wet, you get the idea,

the Goldilocks zone.

    This man made mini habitat, conducive to encouraging these seeds into being a fully productive 

biological specimen.  Carrying on the time honored tradition of encouraging and coaxing  some of 

our natives to thrive in this urban environment I call a garden paradise. 

    So low and behold and lets welcome these teeny tiny and did I say little bursts of life? That I can

only hope they well grasp this human endeavor that invites them to live and thrive no matter the 

challenges. After all it is a native and might have a slight edge either way, regardless of the 

human interventions that more often than not, that get in their way no matter the intentions.