FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I tried to process some pinguicula alpina seeds yesterday amongst a batch of other seeds. Compared to sarracenia and darlingtonia, these seeds are small! I had wrapped them up in a piece of coffee filter and given them a brief run through some bleach and water. In the last step, a lot of the seeds got through the filter somehow. I ended up dumping off most of the water in the distilled water jar they were in until it was mostly wet seeds at the bottom, and dumped that in to the vessel. I am using PPM, but despite this I imagine that was a huge risk, so I had done it last. I am wondering what I could do alternatively to handle these seeds. I have about 80 more seeds I can process, and then ~20 rarer seeds that I am saving for last because I don't want to screw them up.

One thing I am considering is to start them off in dirt until they're big enough to handle, but there has to be a better way.

Disinfect in the "usual" fashion (tube + bleach). Do not wash.

Dump seeds + disinfection solution into an autoclaved funnel + filter paper (wrap in foil, autoclave 15 minutes at 15 psig).

Allow funnel to drain. Add sterile wash water. Allow wash water to drain.

At this point, you have a small number of sterile seeds. The seeds may be removed manually (with forceps), or the filter paper may be removed (with sterile forceps) and placed on sterile medium. Seeds will germinate on the paper, or they may be washed off.

Another way is to add another aliquot of sterile distilled water, and swirl to suspend the seeds; dump the seeds + sterile water into a sterile flask before it has time to drain.

I used to sell funnels perfect for the application, but I'm currently out. One has to buy them 50 at a time, and they're pricey, so I've yet to re-stock.