where are the seeds?
I've never known such a year for flowers not maturing to seeds. I poke about in a brown head and it's a soggy mess, no seeds. Various umbellifers have just stopped, look like immature seeds and have done for weeks, then they drop off.
I thought the later summer weather was good for ripening off seed. Anyone else suffering this?
In the sticks near Peterborough
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My bronze fennel has no seeds on but flowered well. There didn't seem to be as many hoverflies as usual.(I did have that ichneumon wasp) Bee pollinated stuff seems to be fine.
I was just thinking the opposite today. The clematis have all set seed where I would normally have expected whorls of fluff, the roses are all producing hips and the scabious seeds are in the thousand. The strange thing is that the runner beans and broad beans were very poorly fertilised from start to finish.
Do you think it depends on whether there were long-tongued or short-tongued bees around? I read that one reason some people had poor crops of peas and beans was that they had more short-tongued bee species in their gardens than other people.
Thanks fidgetbones
I had lots of insects around but maybe the wrong ones. Fennel hasn't made seeds here either. Bupleurum falcatum, nothing, 2 forum seed swappers were hoping for some of that. That's a real hoverfly favourite and although we had some they weren't in the usual numbers
In the sticks near Peterborough
Despite a slow start, I have had solitary bees in the lawn,(and their predatory beeflies) tree bees in the bird boxes, and bumble bees under the old dustbin by the apple tree. I have seen several sorts of bumble bees, and we now have honeybees on the ivy flowers. .... but not a lot of hoverflies this year at all. There still seems to be ladybirds about.
Clematis, yes waterbutts, Bill Mackenzie is looking splendid.
Interesting about the peas and beans. One or two leguminous plants that I thought had shed when I wasn't looking may not have set seed
I do have seeds, but there are a lot of absentees
In the sticks near Peterborough
Funny nutcutlet. I went to collect seeds from a pimpinella today and nothing there although it flowered beautifully.
There a number of other plants I put paper bags around some time ago and when they were harvested nothing. Many plants currently have seeds but they are not ripening eg. pink california poppies and Lysimachia atropurpureum. Whats it all about?
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
No ripe seeds on my hollyhocks yet, all a bit green and small...
quite a few of my flowers this year have failed to develop seeds. Had some Nasturtiums in Liverpool thta flowered earlier than the ones I have in Leeds, the Liverpool ones have gone crazy with seed, but the ones in Leeds, although still flowering, I've not seen many if any seeds. Mainly seen hoverflies and a couple of bees knocking about. Hoping the seeds will show. My marigolds seem to have done ok though! and the Lupins.