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Scabiosa Columbaria:

ElothirElothir Posts: 94
edited August 2019 in Plants
A number of years ago we had 3/4 small scabious's that were lovely and did really well. As I'm looking to spruce up the garden a bit more lately after a period of neglect I immediately thought of them as they were essentially troublefree plants that flowered and flowered and flowered.

However some people have been trying to warn me off them saying that they will just set seed everywhere and are essentially 'glorified dandelions you'll take forever to get rid of' (a little harsh I feel). 

I know they do produce hundreds of seeds each, but the time we had them before we never had any trouble (to which they say we probably had a sterile variety).

Since I'm a little paranoid about causing myself major headaches for years to come:

Scabiosa - yay or nay on the 'menace self seeding all over' front? 

(I also appreciate that there is an easy answer for stopping this 'problem' - deadheading).

Posts

  • HazybHazyb Posts: 336
    I grew some of this from seed and I like it a lot.  First season so I have no experience of it self seeding yet. 
    I also have centhranthus ruber which is also a prolific self seeder yet I do not have it growing where I don’t want it as the self down seedlings are so easy to remove when weeding. Deadheading helps too as you rightly point out :smile:
  • LynLyn Posts: 21,938
    Very easy to pull out if you don’t want them.  It’s not like ground elder, knotweed or horsetail, which isn’t! 
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • LoxleyLoxley Posts: 5,237
    Named varieties like 'Butterfly Blue' are sterile and won't self seed. They might be confusing it with Knautia macedonica (but I wouldn't be worried about that one either - how hard is it to pull them up where they're not wanted).
  • PalustrisPalustris Posts: 4,109
    Scabiosa columbiara is definitely a prolific self seeder, but as said dead heading stops that and encourages a longer flowering season. Otherwise they are easy to pull out when small. I like them and about to seed some into my putative Bee border.
  • ForTheBeesForTheBees Posts: 168
    I'm another first year grower of these. Given how wonderful they are for the bees and butterflies I'll be delighted if they self seed prolifically! 

    I'll be including them in my upcoming attempt to replace my lawn with a wildflower meadow.
  • ElothirElothir Posts: 94
    WillDB said:
    Named varieties like 'Butterfly Blue' are sterile and won't self seed. 
    I had heard of Butterfly Blue being sterile, but I wasn't aware of any others (or at least no other name varieties tend to state in blurbs/descriptions 'sterile, wont self seed'.

    Do you happen to know of any others (Scabiosa in general in addition to just columbaria) that are also sterile or is it only the 'true wild form' that self seeds?

    Since depending on what we decide we want, we may actually want them to self seed a around a bit, which won't happen with a sterile plant.
  • FoxiesFoxies Posts: 60
    Palustris said:
    Scabiosa columbiara is definitely a prolific self seeder, but as said dead heading stops that and encourages a longer flowering season. Otherwise they are easy to pull out when small. I like them and about to seed some into my putative Bee border.
    Hi - are you talking about the wild small scabious here @Palustris?
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