i consider them an invasive weed ... sprouting wherever a bird drops them.. or where any of the billion self-scattered seeds fall .... i use tens of gallons of credit to kill them off ...

i am just totally baffled that one would need acid to work with the seeds .... go figure ....

are you really asking about the common road side weed??

out of curiosity .. i googled the common term pokeweed and found no reference to the need for the use of acids ... in the 3 or 4 references i saw ...

ken

The following answer caomes from asking on yahooanswers. It is not my own and therefore do not credit me with it.

Muriatic acid is usually 40% hydrochloric acid in distilled water. Sulfuric acid is a little more active than the latter. So try a 3 minute soak and 2 and a half minutes to start. If they do not work try 4 minutes. I think the acid is partially digesting the seed coat which enhances germination of pokeweed seeds. (this procedure would be chemical seed scarification). Some seads require strong abrasion in order to germinate. This happens in flash floods in stream beds.
Cheers.
Doc. Dan.

yahooanswers is notorious for poor and bad information. The reasons I have read is that unlike Wikipedia it is not correctable and I have read that responses are cut off sooner than they are here for example providing less time for rebuttal.

Sulfuric acid is a relative harsh acid, difficult to work with unless trained in the handling of same. Muriatic acid is also a strong acid. Both are found in serious hardware and building supply stores.

I can find no reason for the scarification of Phytolacca americana seed.

There does seem to be a lot of interest in finding useful products within these seed.

Hope some of your poke eating birds crap in my yard! I can't get it to grow and this info is useful! Poke is a beautiful plant.

I wanted the sulfuric acid because a university experiment show the germination rate for the pokeweed seed increased dramatically from a few percent to most after a five minute soaking the acid. It also shortened germination time to a couple of weeks rather than months. The seeds are tough. They can sprout after 40 years in the soil. Anyway, I found some sulfuric acid and soak 20 seeds (I have a thousand or so.) We shall see how they do.

clean them, stick them in a ziploc bag with moist not wet vermiculite - your in Florida - put them in the fridge for a month - plant up - you do not need sulfuric acid this is overkill and a really good opportunity to hurt yourself.

You can obtain sulfuric acid at most car parts stores. AutoZone... Parts america... etc... Sulfuric acid is car battery acid. These places sell it to refill your car battery instead of water. You can get a quart for about $5 I use it for anodizing my alum gardening tools to harden them and color them.

Pokeweed is a beautiful plant in my eyes (at least) and one that I have enjoyed immensely in my yard in Austin. It is not a weed there, but has somewhat naturalized. It does pop up sporadically, and I suspect that it this is a good idea on how to start them (an acid treatment). The same can be said for Chile Pequin seeds which are notoriously hard to germinate, but the birds spread them around my yard frequently. I have read that an acid treatment works for them.

Has anyone grown the variegated pokeweed? Does that come true from seed??????

Thanks.