Note: This is a follow-up post to one I made a few weeks ago about the exuberant mass bloom display of lemonscent daisies (aka fetid marigolds, aka chinchweed, neither of which are names I like) that blanketed much of the desert landscape of Mohave County, Arizona in September and October 2013. The first post I made can be viewed at this link below:
Fields Of Gold: The Best Summer Desert Wildflower Display I’ve Ever Seen
It took awhile to gather this much seed from these short little ground-hugging plants.
Remember all those thousands of acres of lemonscent daisies (Pectis angustifolia) from a few weeks ago? They have mostly faded and dried up by now. There are still some patches of them around but the largest masses have gone to seed. The weather pattern shifted back to a more westerly and northerly track about September 12, which brings an abrupt end to the summer rainy season that comes from the south and southeast, and is in fact why we call it the monsoon. It hasn’t rained for nearly 6 weeks now, and the upper layers of soil have desiccated again although there are still lots of things in flower. Desert plants are so well-adapted to continuing to thrive in dryness well beyond that which would kill many eastern US plants.
Collecting the seeds: Fading lemonscent daisy plants and ripening seeds.
Anyway, these photos are of a handful of lemonscent daisy seeds and chaff. I spent a couple of hours gathering a pound or two of it in the green tub and intend to scatter it in my cactus garden for next year. There are only a few individual daisies here and there as you can see in the background, and I want a carpet. Now is the time to sow them, and hopefully next year I will have a lot more gold amongst my plants. Their show is only a few weeks long, but it is glorious!
Detail of the seeds. The black portion is the actual endosperm and embryo that germinates, while the white portion is the pappus of fine hairs that fans out into a parachute for wind dispersal, like dandelions have. Yellow bits are remnants of the flower petals.
As with many short-lived desert ephemerals, seed is often scattered right as the plants finish dying only a month or two after they germinated in the first place. Evolutionary pressure to have a quick life cycle and set at least a few seeds before the soil dries out too far again has pushed many xeric species to this adaptive strategy.
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The results: The photos below are from Saturday, October 4, 2014, a year later, and fortunately after another good summer and fall monsoon season which included two hurricanes, Norbert and Odile. I received a total of almost 6 inches (150 mm) of rainfall in August and September of 2014, culminating in this array of lemonscent daisies derived from the seeds I scattered in my cactus gardens in the photos above. My plan worked!
I distributed the seeds about as evenly as I could, but factors such as winds blowing them away and harvester ants gathering them up as a colony food source changed the density. But I still consider the introduction of more of them to be a success, especially since once the seed bank gets going, it will become self-sustaining.
Individual plants of the lemonscent daisies are larger than usual due to the generous precipitation of the summer monsoon in 2014.
A nice Ferocactus peninsulae blooms in the cactus patch.
Larger plants = greater future seed production.
In the years since 2014, I have not seen as many of the daisies as I would like, but that has been due to underperforming summer monsoon seasons, not the plants themselves. I presume that the seed bank persists and awaits a benevolent year to emerge.
Until next time guys!
I’m smitten with the same plant (Pectis angustifolia) as well. I’d seen it sporadically but was usually out plant hunting and never got back for seed. This year I had a pot that had one suddenly appear and in my care it last quite some time. Have saved the plant in a paper bag and hopefully it will help me to eventually do something as wonderful as you have.
Yeah, it can be difficult to get seeds of some of the wild and natural plants we like best simply because the times they bloom and the times seeds ripen are often spaced weeks or months apart. And unless you live locally to the plant population, or travel back to the spot at the correct time, then seeds are easily missed. Good luck with increasing your population of them!
With your first post I realized one of the lemonscent daisies had popped up in my front garden. I love it and hope it will have a good rain season in 2019 to sprout some more for me. Thanks for all your knowledge, Jan!
Excellent! Good to hear. Once you have one or two, you should have more in future years.