Germination Instructions

(warning -- sappy alert)

Jack, my hiking buddy, has been sending me emails asking for my "expert" advice. It seems that he has a little horticultural problem. The seeds he special-ordered, for an exotic tropical African plant that he'd very much like to grow for its delicious berries, will not take. These berries are special, Jack tells me, because if you put one under your tongue, everything sour will taste sweet. Pure lemon juice transforms into sugar water to your senses. The instuctions ask for acidic soil, so he's practically nuked his soil with sulfur. And he's tried to counteract the buffering in the soil by diluting it with sand. He's also bought a pH meter from Home Depot that reads "7" no matter whether you put the sensor in bicarbonate or carbonic acid. But the seeds just sit in their pots with their non-existant arms folded and shaking their non-existant little seed heads, "uh-uh, no way". Some have even germinated with much promise, only to die back immediately, "psyche!".

For a while I was having a little bit of a love problem. I put my heart out there more than a few times. So many bad dates. So many good dates that turned out to be with bad boys. So many, in fact, that as a scientist and an analytical thinker I started to think that since I was the common denominator on all these dates, that perhaps I was the problem. I was too picky, or too sensitive, or too nice, or too ... something that I didn't know, and would never be able to fix. A couple times love even sprouted, only to die back. Nothing stings quite like that. To think you finally have it all figured out, and the rug pulled out from under you. Meanwhile my friends around me seemed to find love so effortlessly.

For Jack, I've been trying to come up with the secret to his seeds. While this is definitely not my area of expertise, I did take a plant propagation class in school, where I learned that some seeds are tougher than others. Some can be dropped haphazardly onto any soil, any conditions, and they will just grow like mad. Some require a trick to germinate. For example, some seeds need to be soaked in acid to mimic what it is like to pass through the gut of an animal that happened to munch on the fruit they hid in. It's a trick the plant evolved to have - so that they would not germinate in the wild until an animal had the chance to carry them a ways from the mother plant, and euphamistically, to ensure that there would be nutrients deposited all around the baby seed. Horiculturalists will sometimes "scarify" these seeds with hard seed coats to get them to germinate. They will file tiny scratches into the seed's outer shell to give the tiny embryonic plant inside a chance to break through.

Fire is another such trick. Pictures of Yellowstone following the great forest fires in the 80s famously depict the masses of purple fireweed that sprang forth out of the scorched earth between the blackened and barren tree stalks, having lain dormant in the soil for ages waiting for the signal of intense heat to inform them that the previously closed forest was now allowing light to shine in. There are also some pine cones that will only open to release their seeds after they've been subjected to fire.

Cold can be yet another trick for germination. Seeds may require "stratification", a period of cold and dampness, basically a "winter". Purple liatris needs this for one, a prairie flower. The prairie is a clockwork of plants that bloom at just the perfect time during the season. Too soon and they may be burned by frost, too late and they may be shaded out by taller prairie grasses. Some wait until very late when the grasses dry out and fall back before making their late appearance. All must be timed perfectly with when their pollinators will be able to find them, bees, moths, butterflies, even wind.

It would appear that my own heart required some tricks for proper germination. It needed to be broken a few times. To be devoured by loves that ended up not working out so well. To have little holes filed into it, little hurts from when I felt crushed by others, little emptinesses from times in my life I will miss. My heart needed the fire of someone passionate to bring it to life. It also required a "winter", a barren and loveless time where I felt spring would never come, to truely appreciate it when it did. And it needed for the timing to be just right.

I still haven't figured out the secret to Jack's seeds. But I believe I may have found the secret to my own germination problem, since I already feel the tiny leaves in my heart unfolding ... jason.