finalize a drawing of common seed germination terms

[lizzieinvancouver]

@FrederikBaumgarten Can you work on this with what you have started and we can hopefully then ask for help from @ngoj1 next week or such? Thanks!

[FrederikBaumgarten]

[FrederikBaumgarten]

@ngoj1 Hi Justin, we have another figure request for you! The aim is to depict the general setup of the germination trials including commonly use terms and conditions.

here some more comments:

• it should generalize every seed no matter when fruit ripening and germination occurs. E.g. there are some species that need warm strat because fruits are mature in spring, but need to endure the hot (and dry) summer to germinate in autumn (warm stratification).
• we could somehow include the potentially similar mechanisms of chilling in buds that share only the cueing and forcing phase. -> perhaps "Germination phase" should be termed "Forcing phase" and "Forcing" is "Germination" or something more general to include budburst

[ngoj1]

I've started some of the graphics for this figure and will put them all together in Illustrator after I decide what else needs to do be added. I chose peony seeds for this diagram just because (from my struggles in trying to germinate them) they benefit from practically every step in this diagram alongside their innate need for a warm-cold-warm cycle.

Tangent aside, I'm thinking that for germination percentage I could show some seeds scattered around with some showing radicle/plumule and others not germinating at all, and then for germination time I'll probably draw an hourglass of some kind.

Still stuck between whether or not the stratification step should use the sphagnum or the snowflake, because some seeds were warm-stratified and not all seeds used sphagnum as their stratifying medium, but I can't really think of another way to nicely represent this step.

Any ideas, modifications, etc. are very much welcome!

[ngoj1]

When I met with @lizzieinvancouver we were talking about adding a cyclical aspect to this germination terms figure where we could show how the experiments try to imitate real-life processes that happen to seeds as they are released, stratified, etc. With that in mind, I drew these four preliminary diagrams of 1) the seedpod, 2) seeds after-ripening or lying dormant in the soil, 3) seeds imbibing through rain, and 4) seeds stratifying in the cold. Part 5) will be the seeds themselves germinating.

Please let me know your thoughts on the layout or the design and let me know if there is anything you want to change, add, delete, etc.

Those gray paint strokes in the back are just the underlayer, you can ignore them. I was contemplating whether or not to add the sun for the after-ripening stage, but I know that not all seeds need warmth, and it's also meant to reflect the after-ripening/storage part of the diagram and many seeds were stored in the dark and in the cold. But open to any ideas.

[lizzieinvancouver]

@ngoj1 These are great! I chatted with @dbuona @FrederikBaumgarten and @DeirdreLoughnan today ... and have some feedback. I took notes but suggest we discuss in person also.

1. Maybe instead of one figure we have TWO -- one natural conditions and one for experiments?
2. Change nail clippers to scapel/razor blade
3. Ideally, make the images more ones that can be made small and still look good (less detail to images) ... and abstract the soil more (flatter probably) ... maybe more use of symbols (e.g., cold thermometer instead of snow)
4. One version of figure with just circles and text would be good too, for adding to other figures
5. Less round seeds (they look like fruit) -- maybe example using Acer (for dispersing in spring), or Fagus (fall)

[ngoj1]

Here are the cold strat and warm strat versions of the new draft, respectively:

As far as I know, maple seeds aren't really dispersed in the same way that endozoochorous fruits are because the seed itself is eaten and digested (and their whole thing is the propeller wings anyway). When I tried germination some Japanese maple last year the notes I saw all said that maples go through freeze/thaw cycles as a form of scarification for especially tough-shelled species, but many don't need scarification to germinate. Does anyone have any ideas as to how to represent this process of scarification in nature?

Also: I decided to keep the brown trapezium shapes for soil but just lightened their colour a lot because just having a line to represent the soil made it even harder to distinguish what was going on.

[lizzieinvancouver]

@ngoj1 Cool! I'll ask some of the EGRET team on Wednesday if they have ideas to show scarification. Also, we should show different species for a warm vs. cool strat since needing warm start is supposed to be species specific. Could we pick species we feel fairly sure need warm strat vs only need cold start? Thanks.

[ngoj1]

Could we pick species we feel fairly sure need warm strat vs only need cold start? Thanks.

According to feng18, Ginkgo biloba would be a good example of a warm strat ONLY kind of seed. I'm not sure exactly how warm strat and germination periods are distinguished, but multiple sources say ginkgo indeed needs warm strat or else it won't germinate.

As for cold strat ONLY, there are plenty we can pick from. Does anyone have any preferences, maybe like a favourite species? I think Liatris ligulistylis might be nice since it has a dandelion plume which will be super easy to see in the diagram, but it's not in the EGRET data.

[lizzieinvancouver]

@ngo Thanks for your work on this! We'd like figures with TWO versions of the stratification process: one circle to show a species that needs WARM strat + COLD strat. Many temperate species need both, including vine maple. The other circle should show a species that does not need WARM strat -- a good example would be Fagus grandifolia.

As for how to show the scarification in nature, we discussed and think just showing a seed with a broken seed coat (cracks etc.) would be best.

[ngoj1]

Here's the cold stratification diagram with the Fagus grandifolia as the example. I'll post the updated WARM + COLD strat diagram here tomorrow with the vine maple example.

I'm also thinking that I'll make the pictures much larger than they currently are (except for the branch), since the small details like the nicked seed coat and cracked seed coat are hard to see, and it'll make the diagrams just look nicer overall.

[ngoj1]

Here are the latest versions of the two germination figures!

[lizzieinvancouver]

@ngoj1 Thank you! I think this looks amazing. @dbuona as the resident seed germination expert currently, please take a quick look. If you're happy I think we can close (with many more thanks to @ngoj1 ). We can make final edits ourselves as long as all .ai and .pdf versions are posted.

[ngoj1]

I just realized I swapped the placement for warm and cold strat in the maple example, which has now been fixed. Here's what it looks like now:

[dbuona]

These look excellent to me!

[DeirdreLoughnan]

@ngoj1 I agree these look amazing! My only thought is to make the black arrows thicker.

It might be useful to print this at the scale (half a page?) that it will likely be published and see how well the arrows and text show up.

[lizzieinvancouver]

@ngoj1 These look great to me! I suspect we'll have to adjust some as we decide how to use them for print/talks etc.. If you can link to where all the files are (ideally .ai, .pdf, .png and maybe .svg) in the repo -- we can make the changes ourselves ... and you could close this issue -- thank you again!

[ngoj1]

These are all found under egret/docs/germinationFigure/finalDrafts for the .ai, .pdf, and .png files of these two figures, with both the thin and thick-arrowed versions included. If you need any of the individual drawings as .png files, they are located in germinationFigure/componentArt, and any earlier versions of this figure can be found in germinationFigure/earlyIteration!