Difficulty cleaning arctostaphylos seeds

[Christa Horn]

I’m having difficulty removing the fruit from different species of manzanita after field collection. Does anyone have any tips for processing/cleaning these seeds? How necessary is it to remove the pulp (versus letting it dry) for short-term storage? Long-term storage? 

[Heather Schneider]

We typically clean off as much pulp as we can, but leave whatever doesn’t come off easily. We typically collect the berries when they’re dry and then rehydrate them and, depending on the species, we either rub them on metal sieves or mesh to scrape the flesh off or put them in the blender with taped blades. We don’t worry about getting the seeds perfectly clean, or fully separating them if they’re fused, as we figure that not damaging the seed is more important than getting it perfectly clean. Manzanitas are definitely a challenge!

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