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Growing palms from seed

I thought I might share some experiences I have had with palms being
grown from seed, since there appears to be numerous 'pet' theories
about how this should be done.  Some months ago, I received seed of
both the 'Kermadec Nikau Palm' and 'Nikau Palm' - Rhopalostylis
cheesemanii & R. sapida, from an friend in NZ.   Firmly convinced that
the seed would at least benefit from a couple of days soak in tepid
water, the cheesemanii which arrived first, were left with the
intention of sowing after 36 hours.  

Circumstances were such that I did not get around to sowing the seeds
as planned and when I looked at them after 10 days soaking at room
temperature (21-23C) and half expecting them to be in a very sorry
state, I was astonished to seed tiny white radicles appearing from the
ends of each seed.  I immediately planted them in a shallow pot of
soil-less compost and watered well.  Due to my own stupidity, I did
not take precautions against possible fungal infection and from 11
seeds, all of which went through this  'proto-germination', only one
seedling with a shoot grew.

A short while later, I received another batch of Rhopalostylis seed,
this time of sapida, collected from a particularly good plant, known
to produce similar 'good plants'.  I soaked the seed, half expecting
to see signs of germination in a similar time-span to that of R.
cheesemanii.  However this time, it took 3 weeks and a lot of
nail-biting from me before the radicles started to appear.  77 seeds
were soaked and although there was no sign of life at 20 days, by the
26th. day, every seed was showing characteristic, root emergence.  

This time, the seeds were sown thickly in small shallow trays, after
sterilising in a mild hypochlorite solution (20 mls. of 5%
hypochlorite per litre of water) for 20 minutes.  The compost used was
a lightly moist, sterile, soil-less mix and the seeds were covered to
1cms. deep.  A copper based fungicide was lightly sprayed onto the
compost surface and the trays sealed in plastic bags.  The trays of
seed were maintained at approximately 21-23C and after a further 6
weeks, excellent germination with masses of grass-like shoots is now
evident.  

I have subsequently 'risked' 3 Syagurus romanzoffianum seeds from 10
that I bought and these have shown radicle emergence at 28 - 33 days,
whereas no signs of life are evident from the remainder of the seed
soaked for 2 days and then sown in a conventional way.

I feel that 'the hurdle' has now been overcome and estimate a 90% take
from the Rhopalostylis.  I'm hoping to experiment with other genera of
palm later this year in order to ascertain as fool proof a method of
getting palm seed to germinate and hope that this might be a
successful means of persuading the not-so-fresh seed to germinate and
grow.

Obviously, it is very early days yet and many genera of palms may not
take to this prolonged soak method, but I feel there is considerable
room for exploration of this method and would be interested to hear of
any similar experiences.

      David Poole
TORQUAY       UK.
        Zone 9b
(Now wondering what where I'm going to find room for a Nikau Palm
plantation!)
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