Comptonia peregrina

Description

The Sweet fern is a beautiful and particular looking shrub with green, shiny fern-like leaves which are fragrant when crushed, hence the common name. In the fall the foliage changes to superb shades of russet to golden bronze!
The flowers are small, inconspicuous and wind-pollinated. The fruit is an ovoid nut enclosed in a burr-like cluster of bracts. So, it is one of those cases when we will sow the fruits not the actual seeds.

Most important, the Sweet fern is host for various butterflies and a nitrogen fixing plant being drought and salt tolerant. An excellent choice not only for the xeric garden but also for difficult sites, sandy soils, erosion control and naturalistic plantings.

Germination: various sources indicate that the ‘seeds’ (actually the fruits) are hard to germinate. There is agreement that “most buried seeds still require exposure to strong daily temperature fluctuations before they germinate”.
The fruit pericarp is very hard and require scarification of some sort, followed by a cold/moist stratification. An inhibitor in the seed coat of Comptonia, possibly abscisic acid it is believed to be responsible for the dormancy.

The highest percentage of germination was found with the following: scarification + GA3 500 ppm.
This will translate in: scarify the seeds and sow in the fall outdoors and let the nature work for you (in a cold climate sometimes it works better than GA3).