Acetyl Alcohol

I ran out and I forgot where I bought it. Any mail order sources out there?

Wines and spirits shop? Vodka is the one with the highest percentage of it

Resin

grey goose...... and juice?

We've got a few different types of Vodka here for guests but nothing over 80 proof. I thought it had to go over 100 proof to be effective so I was going to break down and order good old acetyl alcohol which is what I have been using. What do I do with 80 proof vodka... double the soak time?

Is this for Taxodium seed? If so, you can skip it. I soaked mine in water for a few days and put them in moist peat and off they went.

Kevin's quite right - Taxodium has got by perfectly well for the last hundred million years without anyone standing by to soak the seeds in alcohol!

Resin

I used acetyl alcohol the last time I germinated Taxodium and quite a few germinated. It had been my intent to germinate half of the seed I have by soaking in acetyl alcohol for 5 minutes and half by soaking in water for two days to see which would have a higher germination rate after cold stratifying for 90 days.

Is soaking in acetyl alcohol deemed to be merely unnecessary or detrimental to the seeds?

I have a quick question, I just got a new camera today so bear with me but... what are the little round things that came with the seed?

Sorry, that photo isn't too hot. Here's another one.

And now I have to shut my computer off because we are getting hit with a major storm system of some sort. We've had high winds and lightening for a while but this is getting intense. Think I better go check the weather report.

Hi Quillib,

They look like rabbit rear-end product to me - suspect someone didn't clean the seed too carefully

I'd not be surprised if alcohol treatment was detrimental to Taxodium seeds. See if the treated ones grow drunkenly.

Resin

PS hope you got through the storm OK!


This message was edited Mar 13, 2006 2:54 PM

Ugh, the obvious. Rabbit poop! I can't wait to tell several of my girlfriends as well as my husband and my MIL because they were all picking it up and rolling them around in their fingers and in the palms of their hands examining it very closely. We even went and found the magnifying glass to have a better peek at those little round nuggetts. Resin, are you sitting down? I think you better sit down for this one- one of my friends... who shall remain anonymous... picked one up and licked it to see if it might not have a taste of some sort to better enable her to identify it. No, Dodecatheon was not the person who licked the rabbit poop. Oh ho ho ho ho ho ho! This makes my day and I literally am laughing so hard that tears are in my eyes.

Well sir, on that note I will take leave because I have an entire thread to cut and paste into an e-mail to forward to somebody very special who was licking the rabbit poop! I will report back to you all on the upward growth patterns of the Bald Cypress that will be soaked in acetyl alcohol as opposed to the seed that will be soaked in water for a few days.

Equil, Send the friend two carrots and have her/him call you in the morning. Ken

Tee he he! Two carrots and have them call me in the morning! You silly head you.

Hey Resin, we're ok here. I heard the Springfield area took some hard hits with microbursts and possibly even a tornado but I've not seen any updates on the damage. Very high winds by us last night and the power was out for quite a few hours but we've got a generator for the furnaces, the deep freeze, and the sump pumps so we're not going to take in any water like some. I took a flashlight and shined it outside last night and my birdfeeders were flying sideways. The yard this morning looked like a graveyard for branches and limbs but I sure can't find any trees struck by lightening so that's a good thing. The ground is still frozen so water is pooling everywhere. There is also spot flooding in the area but we're pretty high and dry from that respect. We received about 6" maybe even 7" of rain in the past 3 days which is very much needed but not a drop in the bucket for what we must have to get this area going again. Lots of people lost wells last year and we were one of them. We had to re-drill and add sink a new pump. if we don't get enough rain this year, more people will lose their wells and have to re-drill. Most of the ponds and lakes around here are at least 18" - 20" down and some people are claiming 2' or more. My power went out since the last post I made so we must be having water problems. More rain is expected. Thank goodness, let it rain.

Now, I better go cut and paste this thread and send it to Shirley real fast just in case we lose electricity again. I feel the need to share what the little round thingies were with her so bad I am ready to pee in my pants!

Ahh, those are the famous little 'smart pills'.
Does your friend seem more intelligent today?

I've heard of people smoking them, but never licking them, before!!

Brilliant!

Resin

Ah ha ha! Famous little smart pills! Now I need to go and cut and paste the last comments as a follow up for her. She'll be so impressed that I shared her little taste test with people she doesn't know. Gosh, I'm going to be real high on her list. By the way, I'm forwarding the thread to everybody who knows her and to her husband. I can't help myself. I feel it is my duty to share this with all of her friends and family.

Funny you should mention smoking things. I went out to have dinner with my Dad and his ladyfriend who is a die hard gardener. I was telling her about my new skunk cabbage plants and she immediately wanted to know what I wanted those for. I told her I thought it was pretty. She told me that when she was a kid that she thought it was smokable. I guess she aling with a few other kids from the heartland tried smoking corn silk and skunk cabbage back in the early 40's. Oh how my Dad and I laughed at her. She's such a good sport but if anyone has ever stepped on skunk cabbage, I am sure you will share my disbelief in anyone ever having attempted to smoke it. I guess cigarettes and sugar and nylons were all being rationed back then and kids will be kids. Pretty funny if you ask me. I wonder if her mother had to defumigate the house when she came in from "playing".

Forget about the Rabbit! The "little pills" came out of the Taxodium cones. I collected cones directly off the trees and after drying and "crushing" there were many of the little critters included.
As I recall they were hard as rocks and now after a quick search I'm
unable to locate for further inspection!

conifer50

I've had a good look through my disintegrated Taxodium cones - nothing even remotely resembling rabbit poop!

I still reckon that's what it is in these pics

Resin

Okay, I found the "little pills." After disecting a few I've decided they are insect galls or at least the home for some type of insect as they contain pupae!

conifer50

Well, I just ran in the kitchen and cut a few in half with a razor blade. I will take photos tomorrow but the images will look like the ones you posted. I am not happy. Not happy at all. Rabbit poop is one thing but I do not care for pupae in any of my plant material. Sheffields has some explaining to do since the pile of the seed as well as what I thought was rabbit turds have been sitting on my counter since I received my order in the mail a few days ago.

Thank you Resin for the good laughs. My girlfriend was speechless and her husband was all but gasping for air when he read my e-mail with a cut and paste of this thread.

Thank you conifers50 for alerting me to a situation I need to check into a little further.

So I'm remembering the book "Watership Down" and did not the bunnies take a second pass at what went through first? I'm thinking maybe that a first choice to half a worm. Looks like the scratch, sniff and taste test should be better left in the kitchen, but then I remember what Equil's countertop looked like about 10days ago.

My counter tops have been cleared off for a while. Those pupae things really get to me particularly because I don't know what they are.

So far I have ruled out Cypress Looper (Anacamptodes pergracilis) and Bald Cypress Sphinx (Isoparce cupressi).

Ooh, ooh, I know this one! (raising hand)
Ken,
While I've not read Watership Down, rabbits do produce special pellets - called cecotropes; not typical fecal pellets, as these contain essential nutrients - particularly the B vitamins - produced by the cecal microflora, which they do, indeed, ingest.
Here's more info:
http://www.rabbit.org/chapters/san-diego/diet/cecals.html

I'm with Kevin & Resin - water seems to work just fine. I see no need for alcohol - at least not for my seeds.

You crack me up!

Now moving on from cecal pellets to the bonus question of the day-

WHAT IS IN THOSE GALLS?????????????????????

Don't know for Taxodium, but many conifers are parasitised by Megastigmus seed flies, so there's a starting point for checking

Resin

IQ,
Let me get this straight. Your girlfriend licking rabbit poo filled you with delight, but pupae in your plant material filled you with consternation. Hmmm. You know, hmmmmm, again. Hmmmm, one more time.

Scott

PS-Hmmmm.

No, her act did not fill me with delight, it sent me into fits of hysterical laughter complete with tears in my eyes that ran my mascara while I gagged from pop coming out of my nose in front of the computer monitor. I was then compelled to share the revelation that she had been "taste testing" turds with all our friends and her relatives. You'd have to see what she looks like but the mere thought of her standing in my kitchen "sampling" droppings reduces me to a blob of hysterical jelly and is too much to ask of someone like me to keep to myself, it just had to be shared. You see Scott, it goes something like this.

40g Taxodium w/ shipping from Sheffields- $20
prim & propper Pastor's wife taste tests turds- $$$ PRICELESS $$$

Although the bugs I have don't appear to be Megastigmus spp., I think I might be on the right track with Leptoglossus spp. or Tetyra spp.
http://www.entomology.umn.edu/classes/ent4251/LaboratoryHTMLs/Lab5/Lab5.html
http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/foresthealth/97conditions/#seed_orchard

Out of my league so I contacted somebody to ask for help so here's hoping that either he or his wife (both entymologists) can identify this bug.

I still need to photograph my little dissected rabbit pellets and post a photo of the pupa. Come to think of it, maybe I should give Sheffields a call and ask them what little extras they bestowed upon me.

Usually when there's maggots in a product, you can take them to court and sue for $millions . . .

Lauren, I had the same experience with some white oak seeds. When I opened my mailbox I saw what appeared to be a maggot on the outside of the package, I'm assuming it was some kind of larvae. When I got the box inside and opened it, there were about 15 more of them. Some were coming out of the acorns. Every acorn (and other seeds) have germinated beautifully and are growing fine, but I still would like to know what those maggot looking things were. I killed every one I found.

I called Sheffield's and asked them to please share with me the Latin name of whatever was developing inside the little rabbit poop looking pellets that came with the Taxodium seed they sent me. The girl put me on hold and came back to the phone and stated that the "extras" were pieces of the inside cluster of Bald Cypress seed and that the prices they charged for seed took into consideration that their seeds included plant parts that weren't seed. I asked her to please take a few and please have somebody cut them in half and see if she still felt they were a naturally occurring plant parts as in chaf type material. They evidently cut a few open and ran into the same tiny little air pockets that I ran into on a few and she told me there was nothing in there and that this was just a normal part of the plant. I asked her to humor me and to please cut open a few more and that sooner or later they'd run into the little squishy booger type looking pupa. Luck was with me and she came back to the phone and told me they had run into a few pupa and that she was going to have to have the owner get back to me as she'd not seen those before in any of their seed. The owner will be back on Monday. They seem pretty professional and the gal was very respectful and polite so I suspect I'll get an answer to my question some time next week. They do need to get back to me. It was my intent to share some of this seed with a few other people and I am not sending any of the seed out to share until they share with me the name of my little "extras".

Hey Resin, not interested in going after them for the maggots. If they are honorable, and I suspect they are, they will tell me what was included in my seed. If I deem the "extras" to be unacceptable, I would politely ask them for a refund but I wouldn't push the issue. If you had personal experience with our legal system here, you'd avoid litigation at all expense. Losing years of one's life to be dragged through the courts isn't generally worth it although Trial Lawyers would have one believe differently.

you guys are missing out on the best earthen sushi. They taste like chicken. HaHa. We had to eat them when we did a Explorer Scout survival weekend. really not bad. Hey any one who licks rabbit poop has the healthiest immune system around. I know I'm a veterinarian.

Hey Sofer, no sense you missing out on a nice Timone and Pumba meal of earthen sushi, send me your address and the maggots are yours. Oh, lots of rabbits around here. Let me know if you need an immune system booster and I can toss a few turds to taste test in too!

You are a MAGNANAMOUS person! But I don't want any more residents in Montana. we have few parasites here and don't need to add any.

Magnanimous (blushing), eh? Gosh, I'm sure you would have been at least as gracious in extending the same offer to me were you in a position to do so.

Re: acorns and tiny critters, I grew up in an oak woods. We shot acorns with slingshots regulary, and one year I collected a couple of Quaker Oats cans of them. Put them under my bed for safe keeping. Didn't want my brothers to find them, you know. No need to bore you with details, but it is amazing how far those non-legged things can get.

Rick

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww gross!

You know... I already got that visual right after I saw conifer50's photo and cut a few open myself. Mine are all in a nice big ZipLock baggie!

We did that with snakes, turtles, and worms. Eventually someone would find them usually pretty far from the source of my bedroom. What does a maggot feel like when you roll over on them. YeaaaaH.
We don't have any gross things here in the Flathead valley cause God lives here and this is utopia. He keeps it perfect here. So no yucky things to send Equi.

Sofa, tell them about the crawly form of the Heel and Blow flies.

I know about those already, nanner nanner nanner!