Topic: cross pollinated acquilegias

[Ceri]

thanks aqui, I've just sown some delph in my propogator so I'll try it

[Garden Manager]

I find them good planted en masse as ground cover.  The flowers are a bonus!

They are also a good thing to plant near the front of the border as the flowers dont obscure whats planted behind, then the foliage sets off later flowering plants planted behind them.

If anyone is interested a few of mine are already starting to grow their flower stems.

Another thing, is it possible to get the common ones to repeat flower? I deadhead mine to stop them seeding but have not produced any more flowers, yet i have read it is possible to get them to repeat. If so what am i doing wrong?

[aquilegia]

Richard - the way I understand it, you haveto cut back the entire plant to the base after it's finsihed flowering.

One of mine has buds on it too - can't wait to see what colour it is!

[Garden Manager]

Richard - the way I understand it, you haveto cut back the entire plant to the base after it's finsihed flowering.

One of mine has buds on it too - can't wait to see what colour it is!

But Aqui, that only regrenerates the foliage doesnt it? I do this every year after flowering to remove the tatty leaves, but no new flowers result from it ???

[aquilegia]

Richard - oh drat. If that doesn't work, I have no idea.

[Muddy_Boots]

I tended to leave the old stalks until march before tidying up and had flowers come again but don't really know what the answer is!  Maybe just patience is the answer!  ;D ;D ;D

[Garden Manager]

Richard - oh drat. If that doesn't work, I have no idea.

Sorry Aqui - I assumed it had worked for you and you knew a special trick to making them flower - you being one of them and all  ;) (lol  ;D)

Still the cutting back still does good doesnt it - the foliage gets pretty shabby after flowering so it is worth doing.  

(I suppose if you fed them with something like tomato food when cutting them back they might reflower? although i have so many i am darned if I am going th that much trouble just on the offchance!)  

 ;D ;D ;D ;D

[aquilegia]

Ah but Richard - you forget that I've only had a garden for two years and only had my first Aquilegia flower last year. (the slugs ate it before I could really enjoy it >:()

My obsession has grown very fast and very quick!

[Mrs Ava]

Mine flower from late spring all through the summer.  I think dead heading before they have a chance to set seed is key.  I pick the flowers off just as they start to fade, they still may have petals on, but you know the flower is on its way out.  Time consuming, but quite theraputic at the end of a sunny day, listening to the birds twittering, knowing the kids are playing in their rooms just before bed, a g&t on the garden table...the ice gently clunking......THUNK, right, back down on planet earth, dead head and water seems to keep mine going on and on.  ;D

[aquilegia]

EJ - ahhhhh - you paint a very lovely picture! big sigh! :)

[Muddy_Boots]

Oopsidaisy!  Is that why they all spread so much!  Before cutting em down, always shook the seed heads! But I have that silly habit, anything will seed head got shaken, just in case.  After all, can always move em later!  ::)

[Mrs Ava]

I do that towards the end of the season MB.  Poppies are the best, so satisfying when you shake that little pepper pots and trillions of little black seeds fly everywhere.  Problem for me is I end up with them in my lawn!  Oh well, I tell people I am going for that meadow trend.

[Garden Manager]

Aqui - Slugs on aquilegia?  Not known them to go for them in my garden. One of the few things in the garden they DONT have a nibble at!!!!!

EJ - You may have the answer there to repeat flowering. Hadnt thought of that. Clearly you have to catch these things at the right time or they will think " oh I've flowered and made seed so i can go to sleep now"  Make them  think they havent made seed and they think "oh dear I lost my flowers before I could make seed, I'd better make some more flowers".

Thanks I'll try it (if I can catch them in time).  :)

[Wicker]

I know I am resurrecting an old thread but just wanted to say that the first two of my aquilegia seeds have popped thru so, fingers crossed, the rest may follow.  That was 16 March I put them in the fridge until 7 April then onto heated tray until 17 April when I put them in the heated greenhouse where they are now.

They are double frilly ones so I am keeping everything crossed  that I can and still be mobile!

[Shirley]

Just read this thread - what have I let myself in for.  I bought, for the first time, some Aquilegia Danish Dwarf seeds from T&M. I thought I was buying some neat little plants, not some labour intensive thugs.  So far I have three little seedings 1 month after sowing.

[Mrs Ava]

Tis funny, aquilegias grow all over my garden, even through the paving  :o.  If I left them to it, I would be overun by them.  This year I ordered some from the RHS, sowed them, and within a week loads of little seedlings.  The plan is to introduce some more unusual and thin out the 'common'.  They are the least labour intensive plant in my plot.

[Hugh_Jones]

There are three important factors to bear in kind if you grow many different types of aquilegia. The first is that on many soils, the more sophisticated the variety the shorter lived it tends to be.  Most of the long spurred varieties tend to last for 3-4 years in my garden and then disappear, while the varieties closer to the species last much longer.

The second is that (as with lupins) the nearer-species varieties will hybridise freely with the more sophisticated varieties so that seedlings from the latter usually exhibit a distinct reversion to type and will gradually take over as the finer varieties die off.

The third is that if you allow seed to set and then cut and compost the tops of the plants, most of the seeds will survive composting and come up wherever you use the compost. So unless you particularly want new seed remove the old flower heads as soon as they fade.

[Garden Manager]

Aha! Hugh that explains it! I have enough im my garden so usualy 'deadhead' after a plant has finished flowering, this in an attempt to stop self seed in about the place. However i still manage to get seedlings popping up in the strangest of places (including in between rows of raspberries). Perhaps they got there via the compost (i.e. I let the seed form THEN composted them and let the seed distribute that way).

There fore dead heading sooner (ie before seed has set) would apper to be nessesary.  I guess this also means deadheading individual flowers as they fade rather than waiting for the whole flower stem to fade. Might also encourage repeat flowering (????).

On the subject of cross pollenating, allongside the common 'vulgaris' types, I also have a 'Mcanna Hybrid' aquilegia. This i have had for a few years and for a time expected it to self seed (later assumed it would not due to its hybrid nature). It apparently did not. I say apparently since about a year or so a go a 'self grown' aqui appeared which when flowering produced a similar flower the the hybrid, albeit a simpler flower but same colours, thus proving the hybrid had managed to pass some of its genes on.

[john_miller]

McKana hybrid Aquilegia are not true hybrids in the modern sense of the word. They were released in 1954 when truly hybridised plants were just entering horticulture so it could be the breeder was trying to attract some of the glamour.

[Palustris]

THis IS a species and it generally comes true from seed for some reason, perhaps because it flowers on the Rock Garden before the big border ones come out. A ottonis amaliae (I think, but it may not be. Label removal company at it again).