Almond Tree Seeds

Seed Size and Appearance

• Look for the fruit, called a drupe, of the almond tree in July. It will be about 1/2 inch long, oval, and slightly plump. The thin, light-green skin is called the exocarp, and it protects the single seed inside from being digested by animals who eat them. Under the thin skin is a thicker, harder layer called the endocarp. Light brown, hard and pitted, it looks like the nuts you buy in the grocery store. Inside the endocarp is the small, dark brown almond seed.

Seed Dispersal/Planting

• Watch for almond fruits to ripen and fall in September. The green exocarp begins to split a little at its seams, revealing the hard endocarp. Fruits are gathered by herbivores such as squirrels, chipmunks, mice and other rodents, and dispersed over the landscape. Some are buried for winter food stores, and thus "planted." Others are eaten and passed through digestive systems without the endocarp dissolving. Deposited in droppings, the seed has the benefit of extra fertilizer to get it started in the spring.

Cold Stratification

• Take a few almond fruits indoors when they fall. Peel off the exocarp with your fingers, and place the almonds in a plastic bag with moist, soilless potting mix. Seal the bag and place it in your refrigerator's crisper drawer for three months. This process, called cold stratification, mimics the outdoor conditions of winter and is necessary for almond seeds to germinate. An alternative to this is sowing the seeds in 1/2 inch of dirt in a cold frame outdoors, but you must protect the frame from invasion by mice and other rodents.

Seed Germination

• Remove the seeds from the bag in early spring and plant them in medium-sized flowerpots filled with moist potting soil. Transfer the pots outdoors in late spring, keeping the soil moist throughout the growing season. Almond seeds can take up to a year to germinate and pierce the hard endocarp, so don't give up if you don't see results before fall. Keep seedlings in a cold frame for their first winter, or bury pots to their lips in the ground, covering with leaf litter for the first year. After that, almond seedlings may be planted in the landscape.