I have a Ligularia stenocephala "little rocket" that I got from Earl May this year. The plant is starting to go to seed. In the plant files http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/124164/ under Seed Collecting it says:
N/A: plant does not set seed, flowers are sterile, or plants will not come true from seed
Is this true? I thought I read of people starting the larger Ligularia stenocephala from seed but it says the same thing under that plant.
Newbie seed question
Oops! I think I posted this in the wrong place. I'm going to close it and move it to the Saving Seeds Discussion Forum.
Ligularia stenocephala will set seed, but 'little rocket' is a hybrid, so sowing the seeds may result in just Ligularia stenocephala. Nothing wrong with that, if you mention it in your seed trading.
Jonna
Thanks Jonna!
Next newbie question. Am I collecting these right? The photo shows what is in the flower head - I removed the hairs and kept the black part - that's the seed, right. :p
Also these came from one last week that was fairly brown so I dead headed it then let it finish drying out on the cut stalk. Are the seeds OK that way? I have another plant that is also looking pretty ugly where the flowers are spent and seed is starting - the seed is still green, should I leave the stalk attached to the plant or can I cut it off and let it dry out off the plant?
This message was edited Jun 25, 2009 2:10 PM
About your picture: it depends on which plant you are collecting seed of. The left one does'nt look good to me.
The right one might be a viable seed. Never remove the hairs if they are hard to remove.
In general you must leave the stalks on the plant and let the seeds ripen. As soon as they are ripe (seed pods are in most cases brown) you can harvest them.
But there are a lot of exceptions. Just ask here from which plant you want to harvest seeds.
Jonna
Seeds are from the Ligularia stenocephala "little rocket" I'm not sure the left one was a seed, it had one of the Stamen(?) attached to it - you can still kind of see it coming out the top. The hairs fall right off.
I guess I'll leave the ugly brown flower stalks on the other little rocket. The first one went brown shortly after planting it and some of the leaves were looking a little wilted so I dead headed it to take some stress off the plant. It was really brown but not dry when I removed the flower stalk.