Wild Ones Cedar Rapids Iowa City Chapter maintains an extensive collection of native plant seeds for members to access, for distribution at our seed share events, and donations to partner organizations. You can browse the current PDF list, below.
Chapter members may obtain seeds by emailing the chapter. Include the species’ you’re looking for, and your mailing address. If a species is out-of-stock and you have seeds to donate, please let us know!
Seed Library Spreadsheet
What does the Germination Code mean?
We use Prairie Moon Nursery’s germination codes which tells you how to germinate each seed. The seed of some native species need special treatment to mimic the natural processes that allow them to germinate in the wild. One common requirement is cold, moist stratification, where a species needs a period of time exposed to cool moist soil prior to being exposed to warm weather in order to germinate. This mimics the natural process of seasons changing, triggering the seed to germinate in spring (vs germinating too early in the fall and not having the root structure to survive overwinter).
Seed Share Events
For information about upcoming seed and plant swaps or seed-starting workshops, check our schedule of upcoming events or subscribe to our email updates.
Seed Collection Practices
We ask all volunteers to review the chapter’s Seed Collection Practices before collecting, donating, or sharing seeds. This is currently a draft, so feel free to offer any comments! Many thanks to Gina Bartleson for compiling this list and recommended resources.
Seed Library Wishlist
Wondering what to seeds to collect? Seed Library Chair Andy Sohn has compiled this wishlist of species. When donating to the library, please document the botanical name of each species (binomial nomenclature) as well as the year and site collected from.
Whether or not it’s currently out of stock, we are happy to accept anything on this list. If you have seed that’s not on the list, we’d welcome the donation as long as it’s reasonably native and not super aggressive, like Canada goldenrod.
Seed Donations
In addition to saving seeds to give away at our native plant seed share events, we also donate seeds to partner organization and local libraries – including Iowa City Public Library. We focus on donating seeds which are fairly easy to grow and which are sought after by beginner gardeners.
