Sunday, November 16, 2014

Saving Seed


One season's beauty begets another's. Seeds plant themselves well in our backyard, but sometimes I collect some, flattering myself that I'll have the time, ambition, and discipline to plant and tend them. Wait until the stem below them has turned brown, be messy (i.e. spread the wealth), take only a small portion from any one plant. For better or worse, I put them in plastic sandwich bags whose plastic is not completely airtight. Usually they get marked with name, date and location, but it's also good to get familiar with their appearance, so you can identify a plant even when it doesn't have leaves or flowers.

Here, the seeds of ironweed,

late boneset,

Joe-Pye-Weed,

wild senna,

summersweet,

buttonbush,

an attractive sedge,

green bulrush, with its airborne offspring ready to take root when they fall to the ground,

woolgrass (another sedge),

tan masses of deer-tongue grass, their seeds long gone.

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