To celebrate the arrival of winter, we have a special offer on three wildflower species that need the cold to break their seed dormancy: Bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta), Cowslip (Primula vulgaris) and Scottish Primrose (Primula scotica). If you click here, you can buy all three for £12.96 – a discount of just over 15%. Now that the temperatures have dropped it sometimes feels like planting seeds is the last things you want to do, but many plants which naturally live in places where there is a big difference in summer and winter temperatures have evolved so that they need a period of cold to germinate. The seed stays ‘asleep’ – dormant, until it experiences the right conditions to grow.

Seed dormancy is basically a way that many plants have evolved so that the species does best in the natural environment in which it is found. The seeds, although healthy and ready to grow won’t grow without the right conditions – conditions such as temperature &/or sunshine or other very specific ones like having been through a fire! In temperate places like Scotland there a lots of plants that need a period of cold for a while and then some warmth to ‘wake them up’ in spring and allow them to germinate and begin to grow. For example, many Primula (Primrose) species need cold to break their dormancy. You can do this the harder way by putting their seeds in a tray of damp compost in a plastic bag and then in your fridge for a while, then taking them out and putting them somewhere warm (keeping the compost moist) for a time and then planting them out when you see the seedlings. The easier way is to plant them now, in pots or trays outside so the plants can experience the winter cold. Just don’t forget about them!

To test our wildflower seeds here at Mavisbank we have developed lots of ways to break the different dormancy of different wildflower species so that we can test them – we need to be able to see a sample of the seeds at the very beginning of their germination – the first stage of growing into a plant and so we can’t really just plant them outside and wait for the plant to appear out of the soil. It means we know a lot about wild plant seed dormancy!