Licorice - glycyrrhiza seed removal/germination

Hello everyone.

I just stumbled onto a glycyrrhiza echinata shrub in the 2015 fall and gathered a bag full of "fruits".
I intend to plant them on my land as they are N fixers and have other benefits.

My issue is that the "fruit" is a bunch of small, spiny, pods containing 1-2 seeds.
I managed to break the bunch by beating it with a mallet, and that also took care of the spines.
But the actual pods are quite flexible (even if they are fully dried), something akin to leather.
I can't just bang them to make them split in order to get the seeds.
Hand work does the job but is painfully slow.
I removed all seed from a bunch in roughly half hour but i have maybe couple hundred bunches (my land is large).

It would take me weeks to remove all seed like this.

I've read licorice is a hard one to germinate (tough seedcoat) and it needs some acid bath.
Do you know of a way to remove the seed or maybe there is a treatment for the entire pod that will make these germinate ?

I too would be interested in the answer to this but as a fall back I have planted some roots

David

Tipuana tipu has a horribly tough pod protecting the seed which is gruelling work to break through. On advice from a friend, I just put dozens of the pods straight into pots with no preparation and about 30% germinated.

As an experiment, I would suggest just potting or planting and marking a few pods as is, and seeing what your germination rate is like. If the ratio is acceptable, it might be a better way to go.

I don't have access to roots ...

I can't just do an experiment to see what happens ... there is no time.

Licorice needs stratification/scarification.

Stratification is now (winter) and scarification can be acid bath or something else, if i manage to get to the seed ...

Besides, the seeds were meant to be used in the general land seeding of this year which is in March.
After that, introducing anything by seed alone would be difficult at the least ...