LIFE OF SEEDS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1570, 14 October 1912, Page 8

LIFE OF SEEDS.

HOW LONG DOES IT ENDpEE?

Interesting tests on the vitality of; seeds were commenced some sixteen years ago by tho botanist of tho Hoyal Agricultural Society of England. II e made a, collection of forty-three sorts of seeds from the harvest of 1895, including half-a-dozen. cereals, seventeen grasses, a dozen clovers'; half-a-dozen turnips, and allied plants. * The samples were put in. paper bags, which were kept in the close-fitting draSwers ot' a,.cabinet. Every year tho samples were taken out and tests made.'' In tn6.'.case of cereals, tho germination of barley and wheat was very little affected during the first five, years. After that, however, they could only be got to sprout •with greater and greater difficulty. In ten'years not a single seed remained alive. Oats were little the worse in nine years, but by the end of the fourteenth year there was not a white oat snrviving. Two years later the last of the black oats, failed to' respond. . The experience with • grass seeds was that the different .varieties passed out of life between their 'eighth and thirteenth year. Of tho clovers, no red seed was alive in the eleventh' year, and other varieties did not last much longer. Turnip 6eed lost its vitality in the thirteenth year.