Germinating Byblis Seeds

Source of Information: Jonathan Cheong / David
Edited by: David
Date: 17 July 2007

In the wild, the Byblis plant depend on bush fires to stimulate the seeds to germinate before the rainy season. Some growers use smoke treatment to germinate their seeds. To do this they place the seeds in a container and smoke the seeds inside the container. A have personally tried this but the results were not conclusive and it does not work every time.

Another way to do it is by using GA3, which is Gibberelic. Dissolve about 20mg Gibberelic with 20mls of clean/filtered water. The seeds need to be left for about 24 hours in the Gibberelic solution before they are sowed on a peat and sand mix.

Many growers on PetPitcher have found that Byblis seeds subjected to a treatment of bleach can germinate within 3 days and with 90% over success rate. Bleach is a term usually used for what is otherwise known as a solution of sodium hypochlorite, but is can also include sodium perborate which releases hydrogen peroxide or even calcium hypochlorite. This solution is usually use to remove stains on cloths.

Here’s what you do…

1. Mix 10% of bleach in 100% water.

2. Soak the seeds in this mixture until it turns whitish grey. Byblis seeds are black in colour. This is the hard outer crust that protects the seed within. Usually it takes a couple of hours for the seed’s outer crust to dissolve in the mixture.

3. You will need to monitor the seeds because if you leave them in the Bleach mixture for too long, the seeds will be dissolved completely. Remove the seeds immediately when it turn whitish or light grayish brown and rinse it with clean water to remove whatever is left of the bleach mixture on the seeds. You’ll need to be patient do this as the seeds are relatively small.

4. Sprinkle the seeds on their prefered media mix. You can either have 100% sphagnum peat or a mix of 1 part sphagnum peat with 1 part river sand, what the adult plant grows in. Do not cover the seeds with media.

5. Place the seed tray on a water tray with the water level at the same level as the media and put it under full sunlight. If you have a terrarium you may place the seeds in a terrarium, but watch out for Damp Off desease. This is a fungus related disease that causes seedlings to wilt and die overnight.

In just a couple of days you should be able to see roots developing form the seeds. In just about 1-2 weeks you’ll have tiny Byblis plantlets about 0.5-1.0 cm in diameter.