Pansies; Seed to Flower

[Pulsegleaner]

Third plant flowering in pot; solid white this time.

 

[thistlebloom]

I have some white Johnny Jump Ups, at least that's what the flower looks like, but the plants are tallish and lanky.
Used to be only a few here and there, but now they're much more common than the purple ones.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

And they keep coming

Besides the two new ones here, it looks like one of the ones in the OTHER pot is also developing flower buds. That is particularly good, as I was unable to get any Blackberry Sorbet violas (which is what that pot is sowed with) this year (so my ability to have them in the future relies on getting seed from these plants.)

 

[digitS']

I was curious about the name "pansy" and looked for the origins, the other day.

This may change how you think of the flowers. We have gone a little astray from the French idea behind the name.

Both pansy and "pensive" have a common origin. So, a pansy is deep in contemplation.

Steve

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Few non pansy pics (lest you think that is the sole motivation)

One of my chickpea plants has also brought forth a flower

This next one is going to need some explanation

As you know/remember, one of the big things I do with my time is sort through bulk legumes and spices for odd types/weeds that have gotten in.

Well, for a long time one of my best sources of material were bags of lentils from an Indian company (Lakshmi, I think) they were simply FULL of vetch seed (among other things)

In and of itself that is not so unexpected. Between their similar appearance as plants, similar size as seeds (which means they aren't easily removed by sorting screens) and the fact that it is pretty common to use vetch as green manure in the fields (apparently green manure is commonly used even when what you are growing is a legume which presumably can make a lot of it's own).

What was surprising was the sheer diversity of vetches in there. Normally one would expect only one (usually some form of bird vetch, Vicia sativa) possibly two or three (here, the second is usually hairy vetch V. hirsuta, or smooth vetch V.villosa or a combination thereof. But this is not universal. For example the coriander I work with from India has a mix of a small seeded V. sativa [basically the same one that grows wild here] and another vetch called V. nillacea (which I usually think of as the "dollhouse peas" vetch, because of the pods).

This stuff had dozens. While most was a bird vetch (though not the wild type a domestic type called Washington I think, with flattened seeds which often had the same orc gene as the lentils (which makes the cotyledons orange) it was by no means all. There were other strains of bird vetch, something like hairy/smooth but with pink rather than purple flowers (and born in shorter racemes) and a lot of others.

So for the next couple of years I started planting out the stuff to try and work out 1. what I had and 2. would any of it be attractive enough to use as a pot wildflower vine.

Last years crop was a total bust (I got almost no seed, and that which I did was too unripe to be viable) So this year I literally "went for broke" with VERY few exception I planted out ALL remaining original vetch seed I had (the company long since cleaned up their stuff so what I had is what I would have) and waited for some flowers. a few days ago I finally got some

No clue what kind yet (similar shape to the Hairy side, but much larger and there's only two of them) we'll have to see.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Updates

The other pot has some flowers now too, which is good and bad.It's good there are more flowers, but it seems that most, if not all of them have reverted to their predecessors in flower color. EVERYTHING in that pot is supposed to be Blackberry Sorbet, so ALL plants should have flowers with black standards (the top two petals) and a purple labellum (the bottom one). But so far of the three that have made flowers two have gone into something resembling a standard Johnny -Jump-up (purple standards, mostly yellow labellum with purple splotches and "whiskers") The third is closer to right , but it's standards are still purple (so it's a flat purple over the whole flower). Not unattractive, but still not what it should be. So it looks like if you want Blackberry Sorbet in your garden, you need to buy professional seed or plants.

Oh and I got the first two pods off the Purple Eclipse.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Second pot

I know the purple one LOOKS like it has black standards, but trust me, they are the same shade of purple as the labellum
First pot again, showing "denim look" one (dead center or maybe slightly back of center

 

[Nyboy]

I just pulled the pansies in my window box, no matter how much they where watered they started looking ragged

 

[Pulsegleaner]

6/29

FINALLY a pansy has shown up in pot #2 that is true to type (purple AND black)

 

[Nyboy]

Photo please