Desmanthus illinoensis - Germination Guide
This is a quick tek on the germination of Desmanthus illinoensis, colloquially called Illinois bundleflower. The below Wikipedia resource covers this plant and I suggest reading through it.
Link - Wikipedia
While the root bark of Desmanthus illinoensis contains N,N-DMT, it also contains gramine which is toxic. For this reason, this tek is only oriented around germinating the seeds of this plant for documentation purposes on our forum. I believe there are also use cases where the seeds are used for feeding livestock since they are nutritious and don't contain the alkaloids that the bark has.
Preparing the seeds
Illinois bundleflower seeds have a waxy coating that needs to be "scarified" for successful germination. The process of scarifying seeds comes up when working with plants that either have a hard coating (like seeds from this plant) or for seeds that have other unique requirements. In the latter case, the seeds usually also have a hard coating so that is the common factor for when this technique comes up. In nature, the seeds of this plant get scarified through a biannual (twice per year) mowing of their typical location in the Midwest. The mowing takes seeds from Desmanthus illinoensis and scarifies them enough for that some of the seeds to survive and germinate. In this tek, the scarification is more precise.
For Illinois bundleflower seeds, this tek uses a nail clipper or other similar tool to "chip" the waxy seed coating very slightly. The idea is to chip just enough of the seed coating so that you can see the inner seed, which will be obvious because it is a different color. You can use any tool that can accomplish this without damaging the seed or cutting too much of it away.
In the below pic, you can see what the seeds look like before scarification (left) and after scarification (right).

Germinating the seeds
Once the seeds are scarified, they can be planted in a clean seed starting mix on top of a heat mat. The mix can be coco coir and perlite, pure vermiculite, or other seed staring mediums like peat. You can optionally do this "takeout tek" style and put the seed starter mix and seeds inside a deli container and keep it closed until germination. Otherwise, ensure that the seeds remain in relatively high humidity, and in 2-3 days, the seedlings will emerge. I've successfully used pure vermiculite to germinate these as well as coco coir and perlite. I've done it with takeout tek style and without, both work just fine because of how quickly it germinates.

Conditions
These plants survive in zones 5-8 when they are older, but as seedlings they should be kept indoors during the cold season. The seedlings can be exposed to relatively bright light very early on, as soon as you see the first set of true leaves emerge. Once the seedlings establish in 2-3 weeks, they no longer need high humidity to thrive indoors and can be grown in typical conditions.
Seedlings that are about a month old:
Edited by Mycoplex (01/07/24 09:05 PM)
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