From Noels original Lapageria.com site 2003 
This information was given to me by Bill Harberts, my Lapageria pal from Southern California. He has devised a method using the refrigerator to germinate Lapageria seeds which produces great results. It appears that Southern California might not get cold enough to provide the proper "chill" to encourage germination. I appreciate Bill's generosity and willingness to share his "secret." how he finds time to do this with his busy schedule is pretty amazing!

This information is quoted from an email I received from Bill:

"You said that you wanted some information on germination, so I have been fooling around with small batches of seed as as I find the occasional fruit on the Lapagerias. In general and in short form, I pull the seeds out of the fruits, rub them off in a piece of cloth to remove as much "goo" as I can, and toss them in some water in a little 8 oz. yogurt cup. I pour off most of the water every day or so (sometimes 3 days or more because I forget what I‘m doing) and give them a stir. Then I refill the cup with water and put them back on the sink for another day. I try to remove all of the exterior "stuff" on the seeds to reduce fungus problems during germination. 
To plant the seeds, I mix perlite and something organic (peat or a peat based potting soil) about 4 or 5 parts perlite/1 part peat. I add the peat for two reasons, one of which is the acid. It also darkens the mixture and makes it much easier to see what is going on when germination starts and when I need to transplant. I have planted covered with the mix and with the seeds pressed into the surface of the mix. Results are much better if the seeds are covered and firmed in well. 
When exposed on the surface or only partly buried, the new root heads off in all sorts of directions. The shoots will grow up but be unstable and topple over. The seedlings have crooked roots, bent stems, are hard to transplant, and generally are a pain to work with. I do best if the seeds are covered about their own depth and firmed in well. (As an aside, I found one fruit that had desiccated on the vine and the seeds had shriveled and hardened. I tossed them in some water and they took about 4 days to swell up and look like fresh seed. After that they behaved normally. Maybe seeds could be dried down a little for shipment without problems.)

(Note: This is an interesting idea for those of you who only have access to "dried" seed from commercial sources. Noel)

After planting the seeds I put the container ( anything with a few holes poked in the bottom from the bottom half of a one gallon plastic milk jug to an 8 oz. yogurt cup depending on how much room I need) into one of the clear plastic bags from the produce section of the grocery store and park them in the back bottom corner of the refrigerator where they are out of the way. I tend to forget they are there and didn't check as often as I should have to get good time lines for you, but looking at the dates and notes written on each of the containers, here is what seems to be going on. Based on only 6 batches of seed, we are not talking about a statistically significant sample here, I germination seems to be under-way 7 to 8 weeks after the seeds go into the refrigerator, that is when I start to see roots on those seeds that were not buried. Shoots are visible about 4 to 5 weeks after that.

The length of time the seeds are soaked seems to make no difference. I soaked from one week up to three weeks. The longer soak seems to cause no harm, but does not speed germination after the seeds go into the refrigerator: nor does it increase the percent of the seeds that germinate successfully. (Very small sample. I took one pod with 78 seeds and started them all soaking. One week later I planted 39 of the seeds and left the other 39 seeds soaking for another two weeks. Following those two weeks, the last 39 seeds were then planted as usual and put into the refrigerator. When I started checking on progress, I had shoots on the seeds soaked one week sooner than on the seeds soaked three weeks. With only 39 seeds in each yogurt cup, it is a bit iffy to talk about germination percentage but there are about the same number of seedlings in the long soaked cup as the one week soaked cup. The longer soaked seeds were just later into the refrigerator and as a consequence, later to germinate and come back out of the refrigerator. l don't know if the week long soak is required or not. I have not tried planting without the soak, or planting after just washing the seeds, but a soak longer than one week seems to be of no use.

Germination percentage runs from 12/17 seeds up to almost 100%. I have decided that I want to work  with the white/pale pink plant and have planted every seed I find on it. That includes some very undersized and peculiar looking seeds, but what the heck. I am probably getting well over 80% germination even when I include the substandard seeds.

In general, I soak a week and then stick the seeds in the refrigerator for 3 to 3.5 months and voilà seedlings. Then I pull them out of the fridge, snip a few holes in the bag they were in and stick them in the shade for a few weeks to green up and get started. They are very pale and don't have expanded leaves when I pull them out and put them in the shade, but they leaf out fairly rapidly and colour up well. I am careful not to sunburn them. After that, it is business as usual."

Bill Harberts, July 15, 2000