Stratification

It’s that time of the year again, isn’t it, when we all decide that this year, this year, is when we’re going to become gardeners. I know it’s been a fantasy of mine for longer than I care to remember.

Flowers and veggies aren’t my thing, but I do love to grow trees. Since we’ve moved to this little corner of paradise, with the help of family and friends, I’ve stuck something over a thousand bare root seedlings in the ground, and a decent percentage of them are starting to look like trees.

More recently I’ve gone a step further, searching out trees and wildflowers which are not readily available at the Conservation Authority or the local nurseries. Some can be purchased as potted varieties, but the simplest (and least expensive) is to start from seed. And, so far, so good. A dozen hardy pawpaws await transplanting in spring, among others.

But what I’ve learned is that Canadian trees need to be treated like Canadians. That is, the seeds expect to go through winter, lying dormant under the snow until spring, when some of them will succeed in taking root and becoming thirty metre high pines, or whatever they’re meant to be. They need time for their seed coats to break down and for the life inside to prepare itself for the warm spring sun.

But there’s a better way, a way to get far higher germination rates and healthier trees. We trick them. We call it stratification.

Right now I have hundreds of tiny tree seeds – jack pine, scots pine, eastern white cedar, paper birch, fraser fir, and balsam fir, as well as similar quantities of native wildflowers, packed away in moist sphagnum moss in the refrigerator. All carefully marked, resurrection dates calendared. With a modicum of luck these little guys will be ready for planting in little pots in a south-facing window, sending up tiny green shoots, and ultimately turning into forests and meadows.

But the lesson of stratification goes far beyond tiny tree seeds. There are, inevitably, seasons in our lives when we need to spend time in a dark and cold place, a time when important things are happening inside us in preparation for an abundant future.

I’m sure the little seeds don’t really think much about their home and their time in the veggie drawer, but we as humans generally don’t much like our times of stratification. We just want to get at it and move on. We’re not all that good at patience and restraint. Especially if it’s dark and cold.

But the truth is that not everything can happen instantly. You don’t get a medical degree, for instance, by snapping your fingers, but by a decade of grinding study, ridiculous hours, and quiet inside transformation from a naive teenager into a serious and confident health care professional. There’s just no shortcut.

The times when nothing seems to be happening are the times which drive us crazy. We want it NOW! Patience is a learned skill, not inborn. But the truth remains that there are stratification periods in our lives which, while we’re in them, seem intolerable, but when we’ve emerged from them, are clearly times when necessary changes were occurring within us.

I hate to think that maybe I’m not as smart as a balsam fir seed, but nature has its lessons.

(There’s a whole other lesson in jack pine seeds: they don’t need stratification, they’re designed to survive for years until a forest fire melts their coats and releases them to be the pioneer species on the scorched forest floor. Those we trick with hot water, and that’s for another story. But the lesson of patience and perseverance is the same.)