Disastrous seed harvest

The rain finally stopped and dry weather has prevailed for over a week, giving the garden a chance to dry out a little.

However the consequence of all the rain has yet to be appreciated, as a lot of the damage is not yet visible. One thing that is quite obvious at the moment is the lack of any reasonable seed production. Even plants that have a history of good seed production have failed miserable this year.

Over two thousand crosses of Lewisias has produced only 30 seed and the lewisia Brachycalyx has produced little or nothing, all the L.Rediviva crosses have failed to produce seed and the L, cotyledon that when left for the bees to pollinate, usually produce enough seed for next years supply of plants, have done nothing at all. Then of coarse there are no bees to pollinate them, and if there is they could not venture out in the rain. In the last week of dry weather I have only seen about four bees, but then the temperature has struggled to get above 20C and that does not offer much encouragement for us gardeners to go to work never mind the bees.

A lot of the plants are going through the motions of producing seedpods which are swelling up and ripening, but when opened they contain absolutely nothing.

Just one of the pots of Narcissus from a total of forty pots in the bulb frame has seed and that only yielded two pods. The Fritillaries fared only a little better with five pots producing seed but only one or two pods each. None of the trilliums seeded at all and Trillium rivale that yielded twenty pods last year joined with the others this year and did nothing.

The hardy cyclamen are one of the few plants that have the usual amount of seed pods but they are unusually slow to ripen, only the C.graecum type in the greenhouse have ripened at the usual time. Aquilegias did their usual thing, but the Tritonias have nothing at all except for two pots brought into the alpine to shelter from the rain. I am quite convinced that the weather is the controlling factor because all the plants in the alpine house have seeded as usual with Androsaces more abundant with seed than in other years except for the Lewisias of course.

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