Schisandra chinensis

Description

Five-flavour-fruit, Wu-wei-zi

Heirloom from China. The Magnolia vine produces red berries that possess all five basic flavors. Fruits are sweet-sour, and the seed is salty, pungent (spicy), and bitter. In China, berries are known as 1 of the 50 fundamental herbs of traditional medicine. The berries are used as a cure for a variety of maladies like common colds and seasickness, and drinking the tea is supposedly also energizing and stress-diminishing. Fruits are processed into juice, wine, and sweets, the berries can be eaten fresh or dried. The species is hardy. Because the species is dioecious, both a male and a female plant are needed for the formation of fruits. Only when plants start to flower the difference in gender can be seen, so it’s recommended to grow several plants at once.

Five Flavour Berry Seeds require pre-treatment before germination will begin. This is not difficult to do but does require a degree of patience. First, soak the seeds in warm water and allow them to cool to room temperature. Leave them to soak for between 2 to 3 days. Then fully drain away the water. Next prepare a free-draining substrate into which the seeds are to be mixed, this can be a 50/50 mixture of compost and sharp sand, or perlite, vermiculite, or even damp pure sharp sand. The chosen substrate needs to be moist (but not wet), if you can squeeze water out of it with your hand it is too wet and your seeds may drown and die. Mix the seeds into the substrate, making sure that there is enough volume of material to keep the seeds separated. Place the seed mixture into a clear plastic bag (freezer bags, especially zip-lock bags are very useful for this -provided a little gap is left in the seal for air exchange) If it is not a zip-lock type bag it needs to be loosely tied. Write the date on the bag so that you know when the pre-treatment started. The seeds first require a period of warm pre-treatment and need to be kept in temperatures of 20 Celsius (68F) for around 4 weeks – it is not critical if it lasts a week or two longer than this. During this time make sure that the pre-treatment medium does not dry out at any stage or it will be ineffective! Next, the seeds require a cold period to break the final part of the dormancy, this is easily achieved by placing the bag in the fridge (4 Celsius or 39F) for a further 4 weeks, again if it is for a little longer it does not matter. It is quite possible for the seeds to germinate in the bag at these temperatures when they are ready to do so, if they do, just remove them from the bag and carefully plant them up.

OR

Simply soak the seeds in lukewarm water for several hours, then sow the seeds in the sowing mix. Put the seeds away in the fridge for 2-3 months, and keep the soil constantly moist during this period (cover with foil). Let the seeds germinate at 20 °C after this period. Germination can be very irregular.