Pulsegleaner
Garden Master
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2014
- Messages
- 3,332
- Reaction score
- 6,393
- Points
- 306
- Location
- Lower Hudson Valley, New York
Quick question
How often do pansies volunteer in your garden (that is, how often do seeds from flowers you planted previous years actually come up and make flowering plants of their own). (Note: for the purposes of this thread I am treating Pansies and violas as a single thing, since biologically they are really hard to separate).
Around here it's a pretty unusual occurrence, partly due to the cold, and partly to the paucity of seed production (as far as I can tell, a lot of the larger pansies are completely sterile under garden conditions, and produce no seed)
When they do, it seems to almost invariably be a return to the wild state for Viola tricolor, the heartsease (or as it is commonly known in this country, the Johnny Jump up) or some other smaller type.
This year is sort of notable in that we got TWO showing up in our garden, a yellow one with black lines, and a lavender one with the same. (so not always JJU colors)
Last year there was a patch of JJU that showed up in the circle in the middle of our cul de sac I was able to rescue before the gardeners mowed (that may be where the yellow one came from) And while it is not technically a true volunteer I did manage to get a seed from one of last years plants to get to flowering, winding up with an odd little plant with super tiny flowers (only a little bigger than what would be seen on a true wild pansy (V. arvensis) but with a big pansies pattern of yellow with a black eye (though now that I have seen some of the flowers in the Penny line of violas, I'm not sure the division is as clear as I thought.
As I said it often looks like many large pansies make no seed (though which do and do not seems to be quite erratic) And even when they do, the smaller ones seem much more fertile (producing many pods full of seed, rather than one or two with a few). An example of "less bred, more fertile?"
How often do pansies volunteer in your garden (that is, how often do seeds from flowers you planted previous years actually come up and make flowering plants of their own). (Note: for the purposes of this thread I am treating Pansies and violas as a single thing, since biologically they are really hard to separate).
Around here it's a pretty unusual occurrence, partly due to the cold, and partly to the paucity of seed production (as far as I can tell, a lot of the larger pansies are completely sterile under garden conditions, and produce no seed)
When they do, it seems to almost invariably be a return to the wild state for Viola tricolor, the heartsease (or as it is commonly known in this country, the Johnny Jump up) or some other smaller type.
This year is sort of notable in that we got TWO showing up in our garden, a yellow one with black lines, and a lavender one with the same. (so not always JJU colors)
Last year there was a patch of JJU that showed up in the circle in the middle of our cul de sac I was able to rescue before the gardeners mowed (that may be where the yellow one came from) And while it is not technically a true volunteer I did manage to get a seed from one of last years plants to get to flowering, winding up with an odd little plant with super tiny flowers (only a little bigger than what would be seen on a true wild pansy (V. arvensis) but with a big pansies pattern of yellow with a black eye (though now that I have seen some of the flowers in the Penny line of violas, I'm not sure the division is as clear as I thought.
As I said it often looks like many large pansies make no seed (though which do and do not seems to be quite erratic) And even when they do, the smaller ones seem much more fertile (producing many pods full of seed, rather than one or two with a few). An example of "less bred, more fertile?"
