The production of Paspalum notatum seeds presents a lot of dificulties: lack of maturation uniformity, troublesome harvesting, cleaning and drying methods, and erratic plant establishment due to the high number of dormant seeds that normally occurs. The objective of this research was to characterize the seed, to determine a cleaning method and to evaluate the glumes influence on seed imbibition and germination. The cleaning operation (mainly blowing) is essential to get seeds of good physical quality, due to the large amount of empty seeds in this species. Either green or straw color seeds presented good viability leveIs. The glumes did not interfere in the seed imbibition and neither presented any germination inhibitor soluble in water, but represented an obstruction to seed germination. Caryopses, manually removed from the glumes, showed germination at least eighty percentage points higher than intact seeds.