AFTER-RIPENING AND GERMINATION OF APPLE 
SEEDS 1 
By George T. Harrington, formerly Scientific Assistant , and Bertha C. Hite, 
Scientific Assistant, Seed-Testing Laboratories, United States Department of Agri¬ 
culture 
When first matured and in intact condition, apple seeds are wholly 
incapable of germinating. Furthermore, as will be shown later, they do 
not acquire the power to germinate under the ordinary conditions for the 
storage of dry seeds, or under germination conditions at moderate or 
warm temperatures. 
It is the custom of nurserymen to layer apple seeds in sand and put 
them outdoors over winter. While this practice probably brings about 
good germination the following spring, Eckerson (< S ) 2 has shown that 
exposure to freezing temperatures is not at all necessary, as the seeds 
germinate well after being kept moist for a few months at 5 ° to 6° C. 
The present paper deals further with the effect of storage conditions, 
including the presence or absence of the seed coats and inclusion within 
or removal from the fruit, on after-ripening and germination. 
In the germination tests reported in this paper, usually 25 or 50 seeds, 
and sometimes 100 or 200 seeds, were used either in single tests or in 
duplicate tests, according to the number of seeds which were available. 
The tests were made in Petri dishes with moist blotting paper or absorb¬ 
ent cotton as seed bed. 
after-ripening at row temperatures 
1. On October 28, 1918, Black Ben Davis apple seeds, which had never 
been allowed to become air dry, were thoroughly washed, sterilized by 
treating for two or three minutes with 1 per cent silver nitrate, washed 
again in running water, which carried chlorids enough to precipitate the 
silver still remaining on the coats, placed on moist blotting paper in a 
large Petri dish, and put away in an ice box where the temperature varied 
between about 5 0 and about io° C. By January 15 (two and one-half 
months) they had begun to germinate in the ice box. Ungerminated 
seeds from this lot in the ice box were then put to germinate at 20° and at 
25 0 . At each of these temperatures over 50 per cent of the seeds ger¬ 
minated in the next few days. The rest were used for catalase or respira¬ 
tion studies, so that complete germination tests were not obtained. 
2. On January 29, 1919, seeds of a mixture of varieties which had been 
removed from a cider press mash two months earlier and kept in dry 
storage during the intervening period were washed, sterilized with silver 
nitrate, and put to germinate at 20° and 30° C. Seeds from the same lot 
were washed, sterilized, and put away in the ice box to after-ripen. 
In the ice box those seeds which did not decay on account of injury in 
the press after-ripened completely in three or four months, and many ger¬ 
minated during this time, while still in the ice box. At the higher tempera¬ 
tures, however, about 90 per cent of those seeds which did not decay were 
3 Accepted for publication July 2, 1921. 
2 Reference is made by number (italic) to “Literature cited,” pp. i6o-i6r. 
(153) 
Journal of Agricultural Research, 
Washington, D. C. 
abk 
Vol. XXIII, No. 3 
Jan. 20, 1923. 
Key No. G-267 
