mas displays clean, dark green leaves (there’s now a yellow-variegated-leaf cultivar, ‘ Variegata’), followed in mid-summer by a profusion of edible berries. Yes, its flowers don’t last long, usually only a week or two, but that’s enough to get my senses tuned to what’s soon to follow: the earliest magnolias, Forsythia, “real” cherry trees and the Early Rhododendrons like Weston’s Pink Diamond and PJM.įinishing its bloom, C. One of the first of the woody plants to bloom in my garden, it signals the beginning of a cascade of color about to begin. tree) is its display of golden-yellow flowers which appear in earliest spring, just as the days begin to warm. No, despite its name, it’s not a cherry it’s really a dogwood, and the first of this diverse genus to flower every spring.įor me the real appeal of this plant (which can be grown as a multi-stem shrub or trained to form a 15-20 ft. And few trees or shrubs are more appropriate than the cornelian cherry ( Cornus mas) for ushering-out winter, enticing spring to begin. Allow them to grow for 1 or 2 years before planting them in a permanent position.Every year those long-awaited first flowers of spring always arouse my senses and give birth to a primal appreciation of the renewal of life. Growth in the first year is usually between 10 and 50cm depending on the time of germination and cultural techniques and developing seedlings are usually trouble free. Keep the seedlings well watered and weed free.
Fresh seedlings can keep germinating for several years after the original sowing date.ĭo not expose newly sown seeds to high temperatures (above 25 Celsius). Ungerminated seeds can have the whole warm and cold process repeated again to enable more seeds to germinate. It has also been found that fluctuating pretreatment temperatures can give the best germination results and I have myself had excellent results by keeping the mixed seeds in a cold shed through the winter for the cold stage of their pretreatment and allowing the temperature to fluctuate naturally. For larger quantities it is easiest to sow the seeds in a well prepared seedbed outdoors once the warm and cold pre-treatments have finished and wait for the seedlings to appear. Small quantities can be sown in pots or seed trays filled with a good quality compost and cover them with a thin layer of compost no more than 1 cm deep. When the period of pre-treatment has finished the seed should be ready to be planted. When the dormancy has been broken it is quite possible for the seeds to germinate in the bag at these temperatures, if they do, just remove them from the bag and carefully plant them up. During this time make sure that the pretreatment medium does not dry out at any stage or it will be ineffective!įollowing this the seeds require a cold period to break the final part of the dormancy, this is easily achieved by placing the bag in the fridge at (4 Celsius or 39F) for at least 12 weeks (possibly up to 29 weeks). The seeds first require a period of warm pretreatment and need to be kept in temperatures of 20 Celsius (68F) for a period of around 12 weeks. Then write the date on the bag so that you know when the pretreatment was started. Place the seed mixture into a clear plastic bag (freezer bags, especially zip-lock bags are very useful for this -provided a little gap is left in the seal for air exchange) If it is not a zip-lock type bag it needs to be loosely tied. Mix the seeds into the substrate, making sure that their is enough volume of material to keep the seeds separated. The chosen substrate needs to be moist (but not wet), if you can squeeze water out of it with your hand it is too wet and your seeds may drown and die.
#Cornus mas free
Seeds of the Cornelian Cherry have a deep dormancy within them, this requires a degree of patience to overcome and it is usually quite easy to get high levels of germination if the correct procedures are followed.įirst prepare a free draining substrate into which the seeds are to be mixed, this can be a 50/50 mixture of compost and sharp sand, or perlite, vermiculite.
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