I wanted to plant lotus in the pond I built in my garden, so I decided to try germinating lotus seeds.
Lotus seeds are extremely durable. There is a famous story of seeds excavated from ruins over 2,000 years old that successfully germinated.
Perhaps because of this durability, they do not germinate when sown normally.
This time, I tried breaking part of the seed coat and soaking the seeds in water.
Figure 1 shows lotus seeds under different treatments.
A: the seed coat was broken and the seed was soaked
B: before soaking
C: soaked for 10 years without breaking the seed coat
The seed with a broken coat clearly swelled significantly.
The seed soaked without breaking the coat shows little change. It appears slightly larger, but since it came from a different individual, this is likely just natural variation.
When the coat is intact, a layer of air seems to remain on the surface, giving it a silvery appearance.
The broken seed appears to have absorbed water, so I am hopeful that it will germinate.
Next, I observed the surface of the seed coat under a microscope.
Figure 2 shows polarized light observations using a metallurgical microscope equipped with a NeoSPlan 10 objective.
A: seed with broken coat and water absorption
B: seed without water absorption
The red arrows indicate the positions of pores.
The lotus seed coat has small depressions, and pores are located at the bottom of these depressions.
In the soaked seed, the distance between pores appears to have increased.
Cracks in the surface of the coat can also be observed.
The black spherical structures are likely responsible for the water-repellent property.
In the soaked seed, these black spheres appear to have expanded.
Because this is a focus-stacked image, the depressions of the pores are no longer visible.
However, surface cracking and the enlargement of the black spheres can be clearly seen.
The pores themselves also appear to be larger.
I’m really looking forward to seeing whether they will germinate.
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