Pictures of Germinating Herb Seeds
Answered by: Conrad Richter
Question from: Fred Bleuk
Posted on: March 02, 2004

I am growing a few herbs from seeds; some have germinated and are growing well. The problem is the slow germinators. Because weeds are also growing I don’t know what is what, and if the seeds are germinating. Are there any pictures I could look at which show germinating herbs? I need to know what peppermint, spearmint, parsley, rosemary, thyme look like when they are juvenile.

First of all, peppermint does not grow from seeds. The flowers of peppermint are infertile and thus incapable of producing seeds. If you have been sold seeds labelled as "peppermint" likely they are something else, possibly one of the menthol spearmints which, frankly, are not suited for tea or culinary use. Spearmint seeds do exist, but as far as we know all commercial spearmint seeds turn out to be one of the inferior menthol forms which, again, are not suited for tea and culinary use.

A few years ago we started a project to develop a database of seedling images, but that project is on hold currently. It is an expensive undertaking which we still hope to resume eventually.

The book "Park’s Success with Herbs" has good seedling images but as far as I know the book is out of print.

If you can email us photos of the seedlings we will attempt to identify the seedlings for you. The images should be clear, with good contrast. Send them to inquiry@richters.com. Be sure to keep your email size below two megabytes otherwise your messages will bounce.

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