Viability of warm-season grass seed from grazed and ungrazed prairies (Illinois)

We collected samples between October 1 and 10, 2003, and sent them to the Illinois Department of Agriculture seed lab. Bags were labeled only with species and sample number. The seed lab planted 50 to 200 seeds from each sample with no pre treatment (Shirley 1994, Heon and Larson 1999). Our samples of little bluestem had many empty seeds despite the appearance of fully formed awns so the seed lab could not always plant 200 seeds from each sample. Data are reported as the proportion that germinated and were arcsine transformed for analysis. We analyzed the data with one-way ANOVA and Bonferroniadjusted pairwise comparisons.