Biological Study on Seed Germination of Taxus mairei

Seed germination biology of Taxus mairei from Lianzhou,north Guangdong Province was studied. The main results showed:(1)The weight of per thousand freshly harvested mature fruits was 479.5±14.2 g,the dry weight of per thousand seeds was 73.785±1.249 g,and the average size of embryo was 2.66±0.36 mm in length and 0.86±0.13 mm in breadth. (2)The germination experiment revealed that the freshly harvested seeds was shown deep dormancy characteristics because they seriously delay their germination under moisture and at 25℃ conditions and only appeared little rupture of seed coat through 52 weeks. (3)The seeds were easy to loss water and to imbibe water. The water contents of washed seeds respectively came down to 26.93% and 12.52% under shady condition for 24 h and a week,but the absorbing water of seeds can went up 44.39% at 25℃ for 24 h. It seemed that the seed coat was quite permeable. (4)The water extract from seeds could inhibit the germination of Brassica parachinensis. Comparison with germination in distilled water,the reduction of germination percentage of B. parachinensis by commensurate extract with 100 mg dry weight of seeds of per milliliter was called “relative germination inhibiting rate (R100)” in present study. The R100 of water extract of freshly harvested seeds of T. mairei was 64.52%. (5)The seeds were exposed in “warm temperature (25℃) stratification-low temperature (5℃) stratification” for different corresponding duration:12-36 weeks,24-24 weeks,and 36-12 weeks,respectively. The results showed that 36-12 weeks was most effective to break the dormancy of seeds of T. mairei. Ending off this stratification,the germination rate counted up to 74.9% (range from 64.0% to 82.2%) in 28 days. But (6) if above seeds were imbibed for 24 h in (A) mixed solution of 1000 mg·L-1 gibberellin (GA) and 100 mg·L-1 indoleacetic acid (IAA) and (B) distilled water,the significant difference about seed germination still weren’t observed between seeds by pretreatment of mixed solution and by distilled water.