so welcome to another your Chris video and in this video we're going to start germinating one of the most iconic tropical looking plants and that is the bird of paradise plant also known as strelitzia reginae named after Josh thirds wife a believe and these seeds which we'll get a closer look off in a second a very very hard and black with a little orange Tufts on them and to germinate them Unitas I'll break down the outer coating so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna soak these in water for a couple of days but before I soak them in water I'm going to just Nick the surface of the seeds and we're going to remove the orange Tufts now birds-of-paradise and you think I'm as very exotic very tropical plants about so they've come from South Africa so more of a Mediterranean climate where they get nice hot summers hot dry summers and mild wetter winters and in the UK now listen and groaning conservatories and some people do plant them out for summer as well now growing from seed you have to have a lot of patience the germination time it's normally a couple of months I've germinated them before any I think it took about four or five weeks before the seeds to germinate and for them to flower from seed you're looking at three to five six seven eight years something like that depending on how well the looks after and what growth they get throughout the year and I found that the birds-of-paradise plants used to find them in DIY stars and garden centers quite a lot but in the last year or so have been looking for the plants I've not actually found them found more Heliconius and lords are different indoor plants but the bird of paradise has been a bit harder to find so I'm gonna grow these from seed and this packet of seed I got from it was gifted to me from Madeira and only three seeds in a pack so hopefully they all germinate and where these have been stored when the Madeira there's probably I think about the airport or like a greengrocers supermarket so they might not have been kept now ideal conditions since I've had them I've kept them in the fridge for the night and cool about five degrees getting the shelf of the fridge it's hot for little germinate now like I said I gotta be really patient but we're gonna do our best to get them to germinate by making sure the outer case is broken down a bit by soaking and nicking the seed so that's is what I'm going to do now so need to remove the orange fluff this tuft on the side of the seed so I'm just gonna pull that off hopefully it comes off pretty easily like so do that with a third one and this is just basically how the seeds formed into that after the flower has died has this full of attached to them which is not needed for germination might inhibit it so I've removed that and now we're going to make a nick in these so you can basically rub them on some paper or a file or in my case it's gonna use some nail clippers and just Nick on the side of the seeds so we've got the seed here you can use pliers to hold them steady arms hold them between my fingers and then with the edge the corner I'm just gonna Nick the side of that outer hard shell and you can see a little bit white now showing and that means water can easily get in and help with the germination process I've done that to a couple of seeds just do this to the last seed so again the edge you can see that there and obviously if I had loads of seeds I would probably use a sandpaper method but when I've got three so happy to do this method it's pretty easy and you get good bit of the white in a seed showing so now I've got my three seeds prepped and going to just put them in water and I will soak them in water for a couple of days I'll change the water a few times as well and I'll keep this little pop of underneath a radiator on the ground so it's pretty warm in the house just to start the germination process are hopefully static it just takes several weeks and then after a couple of days I will put them into compost about two or three centimeters deep and just basically seed so in compost earnings number one in a little pot and I'll put that in the propagator where it's nice and warm kept above 20 25 degrees and hopefully will see these germinate in the next video you