Cape Myrtle seeds

This season, it appears that there are seeds ready to be collected in the Laurel forest of the Azores, and these are the Cape Myrtle seeds (Myrsine retusa).

On a rainy day, we collected around 700 fruits of Cape Myrtle on the area of Tronqueira Miradouro, from which we then withdraw the seed. For this, the fruits are placed in water to soften, the pulp is removed and the seeds separated. These seeds are germinated in the nursery of the municipality Povoação, from which plants will emerge, and grow until they're ready for replanting in the field.

In another area, the Pico Verde, in the heart of Serra da Tronqueira, it was found that the seeds were not ready for collecting, so we will return to the place to gather some other time.

It should be noted that the results in 2010 were very positive with a collection of around 2000 seeds of Cape Myrtle, at Serra da Tronqueira. The first germinations (at the end of last January) were confirmed shortly after eight months of sowing, and we are expecting even better results.

This way one more species of the Laurel Forest was gathered and added to our Project-LIFE's nursery, that together with Azorean Plum, Fire trees, Laurustinus, Azorean heather, Picconia azorica, among others, will repopulate our areas of intervention and recovery of the Azorean Laurel Forest.