I got an amazing 75-80% germination from just disassembling the cones & placing the seeds in a glass of water, covered & placed in the fridge over the winter.

Germinating right in the water? Or just stratifying in water?

I've had good results with the following method. I'm sure there are multiple ways.
I soak Taxodium seeds in ethyl alcohol for 5-10 minutes. Then I soak them in water for 24hr in a ziplock bag in the frig. Next I drain the water from the bag and leave the moist seed in the frig in the sealed ziplock bag for 3 months for cold stratification. Finally I plant them in loose, moist media usually peat/pine bark fines/perlite. Some seeds will start germinating in the bag while in the frig. If you plan on sowing outside, I'd pretreat with ethyl alcohol and soak in water as above, then sow in the fall.

Patrick

Thanks Patrick about the ethyl alcohol. I had heard about it but I never could remember how long to soak them in it.

In the past, I tried various ways to see what suits me the best. I have rootmaker starter tray so it's not like I can just plant seeds there and wait for them to germinate as it can take up a lot of space. I prefer to lay seeds on the wet paper towel inside plastic sandwich container with the lid on after several months in the fridge. At room temperature after a couple weeks, the seeds will pop out tap root. I would carefully place them into a hole in the media and keep the media moist. I got pretty good % out of it when it comes to filling in all the cells in the rootmaker trays. It's pretty crazy how long the tap roots can grow if left in the container too long. Just 1/4 of an inch is all you need to plant them.

OK - weird question, Lou-about presprouting on a paper towel.

I've done the "paper towel" thing with acorns = lying them on their side so the taproot comes out the tip - and due to the size of the acorn, the taproot is already pointing downward at 1/4" and has not yet hit the bottom of the container when I plant them in individual containers. I just plant it the same direction and voila!

When doing this with a small seed like Taxodium, does the taproot just grow horizontally since it can't grow down at all? It will pretty much immediately hit the paper towel, which is flat on the bottom of the sandwich container, right? And if it does, do you stick the taproot DOWN in the medium, or sideways, and let it turn down naturally after that point?

I plant the seeds in black clay topsoil, about 50 to 5 gallon pot and place pot in tub of water outside in January. Try to keep water level in tub roughly even with dirt in pot so seeds stay moist to wet. Remove pot from tub on 15 May and place in sunny (6-8 hrs minimum)spot and water every other day. Get close to 100% germination with fresh seed. When seedlings are big enough, usually August, separate them and transplant into separate 5 gal pots. Works in Z8 Tx.

IF I wait til February to do this the germination rate goes down.
Obviously the seeds require more than normal exposure to wet conditions to germinate.

hairmetal,

I try to point tap root straight down when placing seeds in the media. Wait too long and tap root is 2 inches long! The tap root initially curves then goes straight out along the wet towel.

Scotjute,

I tried your way and it works but the tap roots were unbelievably too long to transplant successfully into rootmaker starter tray. I cut off tap root to fit into the tray to see if it works. Not a single one survived. I transplanted some into 1g pot with the tap root untouched, they all survived and thrived.

Hair, in spring I just placed the seeds in the soil. They were just barely showing some emerging root tips at the time.

I am using rootmakers myself, Lou. Also trying a few other methods.

So, it sounds like baldcypress are fine with air pruning, but cannot tolerate the mechanical pruning of the taproot? Or was it a matter of the taproot possibly being too big at the point it was cut?

It was probably just too long that I had to prune them off to fit into starter tray. We're talking about 8-10 inches of tap root... I was surprised how quickly and deep tap roots grew when the top part wasn't that tall.

Hey, I have a bunch of MC seeds if you want to try them out. PM me.

The seeds came from a MC that my brother grew from seeds that I collected from a MC at my college in NE Texas that went through very cold weather in 1989 which I believe saw 1*F weather without any damage.