Buggy Mimosa tree seeds. A public Service Announcement

Hi!

Just wanted to warn anyone who might be thinking about collecting Mimosa tree seeds that they might contain a hidden surprise:

The best suggestion would be to put the seeds in the freezer to kill the bugs like is done with mesquite seed pods.

Are you going to grow mimosa trees or do something else with the seeds?

Anne Miller wrote:The best suggestion would be to put the seeds in the freezer to kill the bugs like is done with mesquite seed pods.

Are you going to grow mimosa trees or do something else with the seeds?

Hi Anne,   I was going to grow them.  I took the bag outside and just let the bugs fly away.   By good fortune I had sealed them in a zip lock bag so the bugs were all contained and not flying through the house.  I'll have to check to see how many seeds are still viable.   I'm assuming that they hatched from one per individual seed but I'm not sure yet.  I used an image search and found out that the bugs are actually bean weevils.  I think that I'm going to have to get more seeds so that I have enough.  I was just planning on getting a ton of seeds, very crudely scarifying them, and throwing the whole batch in a pot of dirt this spring to get seedlings to transplant.   I do this with redbud and it works out well for that.   I'll have to try your freezer suggestion.  Thank you.

If you go ahead and plant them now Mother Nature might stratify them for you though what you are planning might help Mother Nature out.

Tim, I've collected and tried to grow mimosa seed for years by collecting seed, planting in pots and wintering over outdoors and had no germination.

I read somewhere to collect the seeds, shell them and store in doors for the winter.  Plant in the spring.
I had great success this way and probably more trees survived than we need here.

It didn't really make sense as the seeds from the trees spend the winter on the ground,etc.  I think they may spread more from runners though and maybe germination is low and that's why the trees have such an enormous amount of seeds?

I hope you caught the weevils early enough to still have some viable seed.
Was it this years seed?