If you are using 'dog rose' hips for their vitamin C content, it helps to stew them first and drain off the liquid because there are lots of little hairs around the seeds. Strain it through a fine mesh - a bit tighter than for flour. (Proceed as if you are going to make either rose hip syrup or jelly. About the same quantity of water.) You could probably use R rugosa hips also. They're far less fiddly to skin and clean! A peaceful job for by the fire in mid- to late autumn. Catch them while they're still fleshy and before they 'mummify' on the bush over winter.

Nature provides many variables to insure perpetuation of the species. If the type has "evolved" in an arctic climate, where the seeds and plants endure weeks to months of hard freezes, it stands to reason those seeds which tend to germinate with little to no period of cold treatment have probably been pretty well weeded out. From those, you would likely have greater success from seed given cold stratification. Not that ALL would require it, but probably more will germinate with it. As Sally suggested, for those genetically suited to areas which just don't freeze, it's likely (and has been my experience) no real cold treatment is necessary to get good germination. But, there are many variables which govern germination. I've had years where nothing should have germinated as everything was 'wrong', and the blamed things came up like rye grass. I've had others where all the stars aligned, with all "I"s dotted and "T"s crossed and germination was terrible, even from those tried and true seed setters which tend to germinate around the mothers without any assistance. I tend to hold my seeds in the refrigerator simply to delay germination until it's cool enough to plant. I have ripe hips by July, but it won't be cool enough to handle the seeds under soil until late November to early December. Some years, that's longer because the squirrels and rats begin eating the hips/seeds earlier. Some years, it's shorter because all the other conditions cooperate. Some years, I've been able to just harvest and plant, which is actually easier for me. Little is actually written in stone, as there are exceptions to every rule. Often, the exceptions appear to BE the rules. Banksiae is well known for requiring up to two years to germinate, yet I have a lutescens seedling which exploded from the soil in four months from planting the seed. None of the others ever germinated. You pretty much use the suggestions to see what works with what you grow, where you grow it and what makes it easier for you to grow them. Kim

I am the original poster of this message. I haven't had a chance to take photos yet but I will do that soon. I remember when I looked on the ground around the base of my roses, it was as if the leaves had just disintegrated. The leaves weren't even in big enough pieces to see what happened to them. As I said before, I had been distracted with houseguests and other things for awhile so I didn't notice this problem until it was way too late to look at the leaves and try to diagnose what happened. The leaves just seemed to have ended up on the ground as a sawdust-like material. I will look tonight to see if there are any new signs of leaves. They have been without leaves for a long time now. I did think of one thing that I did differently this spring. In addition to an extremely steamy, humid and wet spring and early summer, I put down a heavy layer of shredded wood mulch from Southern States. Not sure exactly what it was comprised of. I usually use a thin layer of pine chips.

Helen, nc k ville dudes. Break it down like that and just say it. We live in NC (North Carolina) in town called Kernersville (K ville) and dudes is pretty explanatory. The Magnus Johnson book is good but really meant for a person who is wanting specific identification criteria for identifying clematis. It tells you all you would ever want to know about the stems, leaves, petioles, inflorescences, flowers, tepals, flowers and buds, and a multitude of many other things. This part of the book comprises pages 137-856. I find those pages interesting if not somewhat rather technical. The first 136 pages include a variety of topics about clematis history, fragrance in clematis, planting and cultivation, specifics on varieties for different locations, clematis as a cut flower, hybridization, propagation, and a lot of morphological info about leaf arrangements on stems, seeds, leaf shapes, etc. I know what you mean about fresh seed. I typically collect my seed over the course of the summer and then sow them later in the year. Next year I think I am going to try and start some as soon as it is picked. I have even seen reports that picking seed before it is totally brown/dried and planting it has helped some people speed up germination. Perhaps this is due to the concentrating effects of drying seed and the relative amounts of any chemical inhibitors present or it may just be a simple fact that a seed that is somewhat moist is going to better be able to absorb water to start the germination process than one that is totally dried out. Last night I picked through a bunch of other seeds in my baggies and peeled off the seed coat. I did find a few that had nothing inside or what was inside was all mushy. Perhaps you got seed that look fertilized but in reality they weren't or that were somehow defective. I also know that on some of the wild viorna seed and seed from my own texensis seed, if you look closely at the seed, there is sometimes a small hole at one end of the seed where it appears that something has bored into the seed. I do know that on quite a few salvia plants, bees and other pollinators will often rip the flower down near the base of the flower structure for more ready access to the nectar. I think there must similarly be some type of insect that does this to clematis seed resulting in what appears to be a fully developed seed with nothing inside.