Flower Gardens

» Cottage_Garden - Daffodil Seeds

Hybridizers grow daffodils from seed to try to produce new varieties. The problem with it is it takes a really long time to get a blooming size bulb from seed. Typical is maybe five years! Most people buy and plant bulbs because they like results (flowers) sooner than that.

That said, daffodils that naturalize well are seeding themselves about naturally, so if you have a naturalized planting you should see seedlings popping up sooner or later.

The initial foliage is very thin, I usually found them about a flower stem's length away from the original clump. That makes sense: the ovary is at the base of the flower petals, then when the flower fades and eventually the stem topples over and splat, out fall the seeds.

Back to your question, the seeds are ripe when they literally rattle in the seedpod or the pod is about to burst open on its own. They should be black then.

Some people plant them right away, others wait and plant in late summer. Apparently they can also be stored, but with the time frame we are looking at, why would you want to delay even longer?

-- posted by Cottage_Garden