New seed germination trial

I have been waiting to find the materials to do some germination tests on a group of Clematis integrifolia seedlings. They are from seedlings of C. integrifolia var. Rosea, Olgae, Tapestry, Floris V and Alba. You can see some of the flowers in this Picasa Web album. These plants did very well in their second season in the ground so I was quite impressed. Will they survive this winter which seems to have its ups and downs. I don't know but am sure hoping!

Finding a medium to use in petri dishes is a real challenge but I think I might have found the winner. I thought of things like panty liners which I would cut to fit but as far as I know they all come with adhesive on the back (I asked). I might still try them for something else but in this case I was short of seed for at least one and I did not want to lose them with a bad start. On Saturday I stumbled upon the idea of using facial cleansing pads made out of pure cotton. So into each plate I put 8 mls boiled and cooled water with the bottom pad getting 5 mls and the top getting 3 mls. Between the covers so to speak I put ten Clematis seeds. This is a good amount of medium for the number of seeds I am using. In each population I tried to choose 5 ripe seeds and 5 green seeds. I noticed that whether they were ripe (brown) or green (self explanatory) some had well developed bumps in the center and some did not. You can see in the last picture that the seeds at 2 and 9 o'clock look bumpy in the middle. If this works then I will do a few more based on this visual characteristic.

Once the seed was placed on the bottom sheet, I added a top sheet and sprayed it with 3 mls of water, put the cover back on, and placed all the dishes in a zip lock bag. The bag of trays is on a shelf in the tv/computer room where the temperature should stay quite regulated.
I now have a video capture (small) microscope so if I can I will do some pictures of the embryo areas (the bump)of a few seeds to illustrate the significant difference of their sizes.