Seeds Can Germinate After Several Years. Here's The Explanation

There are a lot of knowledge that can be grasped through observations and experiments on germination conditions and mechanisms such as seeds, but at the same time they are diverse and difficult to answer when asked.

As introduced in other answers, there are some examples of germination after over 1000 years of dormancy. However, there are many things that can hardly germinate in a few years.

Some species germinate best during the period of 1 to 2 weeks after they have ripened, while others begin to germinate after several months. Perhaps it is tuned to germinate best at the right time to match the natural environment, especially the seasonal changes. In particular, wild species have large variations in germination time.

In addition, in order to germinate well, the seeds need to mature well, and a sufficient dormancy period may be required. At that time, some seeds cannot germinate until they have passed through a period of constant temperature and humidity, such as vernalization.

If seeds can germinate well several years after being harvested, the seeds were originally seeds with a lifespan of several years, and they would have been dormant in an appropriate environment.

On Tanaka Noguchi's website, I explained the life of vegetable seeds.

Life of new seeds and vegetable seeds

In the Oga lotus, all three seeds that could be collected were planted and germinated by only one. Since the denominator is small, it is inappropriate to calculate the germination rate from here, but I think I did a lot of drastic things. In this case, since the peat layer was collected, oxygen was cut off and carbonization was not performed in an environment where there was not much change in the underground temperature, so it would have been a long dormant period.

In the case of NADESHIKO, when I read the article, I was interested in extracting the tissue, and I wanted to investigate in detail if there was an opportunity to germinate from the seed. Apparently, it was not germinated from seeds, but clones from placenta cells. That's great enough. The point of this case is that it was stored at low temperature in permafrost and that the seeds that fell on the ground were not preserved as they were, but it was also large that animals such as squirrels collected and stored think.