Raniformis wrote: ↑March 21st, 2025, 8:59 am
Maybe a bit of both as they most definitely fry in direct sun during summer. The last batch I put down was on the 18th of December, same seed I used in early spring, success rate was severely reduced. On the up side, the lower germination rate allowed those seedlings to easily catch up and overtake those that were left in crowded pots.
The takeaways - don't germinate seed in direct sunlight during the heat of summer and don't overcrowd the pots.
20250321_094224.jpg
Spring batch vs summer batch (linariifolia). Notice the only area of the pot to successfully germinate from the summer batch was shaded by the lip of the pot and once they provided shade to the rest of the pot the odd straggler appeared.
There could be something in that but I'm not convinced it applies here.
These seeds were sown in mid Oct (middle of Spring) and nothing sprouted. The M. cuticularis had very poor sprouting but it was fairly even across the surface of the pot... these all withered/shrivelled when left exposed with no water.
The fresh stypheliodes seed (and the Lepto seed) all germinated at a good rate and evenly on the surface. I lost a lot of these, mostly the ones in the middle survived (furthest from heat and therefore most moist area??). When I planted out the extra seed for the L. continentale it was in the same pot as these rhaph seeds, in direct sun and at the end of Feb in pretty hot conditions. The germination rate was good and even across the pot.
I think it was the lack of water/dry/hot that killed the sprouted seeds, but I think the viability of the older Melaleuca seeds was compromised over the 5 year time frame. It's all just supposition though really... just my feeling.
Your seedlings are looking good!
I used the bog method to sow these (and the other seeds). I won't go into detail as I think I gave a pretty decent description of how I prep the pots etc in this post :
