Data and R code for: Long-term ambient storage reduces germination and slows it unevenly in five dry-forest trees from southern Ecuador

<p dir="ltr">Raw data supporting a comparison of seed lots of five native tropical dry-forest tree species from southern Ecuador — <i>Caesalpinia spinosa</i>, <i>Ceiba trichistandra</i>, <i>Coccoloba ruiziana</i>, <i>Eriotheca ruizii</i> and <i>Geoffroea spinosa</i> — held 12 to 17 years under ambient laboratory conditions, against freshly collected lots of the same species. The dataset comprises morphometric measurements (mass, length and width) of 986 individually coded seeds, daily germination records for the 302 seeds that germinated out of 948 sown, and 23 censuses of shoot height and leaf number over the first three months of seedling growth.

Seeds were sown individually in two groups, in March and May 2023, and every seed carries a code that links its morphometry to its germination record. Read README.txt before reuse: the germination file lists only germinated seeds, so the numbers sown are needed to compute germination percentages, and seedling heights that fall to zero reflect removal for destructive sampling rather than mortality.</p>