“Gone to seed” is a distinctly American agricultural saying from the time when most of America’s population was living on a farm. This adage usually denotes very negative connotations when applied to people, places and many objects.
The implication is the subject of the remark has reached terminal depreciation after delivering all they are capable of producing. When grain crops had gone to seed it meant harvest was at hand and the fields could be cleared.
The plant from which the annual crop was derived usually had little worth. It was chopped and used for livestock bedding or burned, but it had no additional potential for growing anything of value.
The shortening days and falling temperatures in panhandle Florida result in many native annual plants displaying seeds which were grown during the previous warm season. Better knowledge of how these plants, which live only a year, propagate has led to an understanding of the ingenious ways they continue their species the following spring.
Spanish Needles (Bidens alba) are maturing their seeds as the early autumn days shorten and the air becomes drier and cooler. Many of these native plants are still blooming and providing pollinators nutrition in preparation for winter.
Many plants identified as wildflowers have gone to seed by now. They are preparing for next year’s colorful show, but the dying foliage still has a valuable part to play in both the curing and distribution of the seeds.
Most wildflower seeds are distributed by wind, birds and animals. The seed heads or pods are easily shattered when the seeds are mature and are readily scattered.
The ever-present plant Spanish Needles employs two barbed prongs which attach the seeds to unsuspecting passersby. After a period of travel the seeds are brushed or scratched off, and they colonize a new plot.
Bidens, the scientific name for this indigenous plant’s genus, literally means two teeth in Latin. The plant, which has prolific white blooms with yellow centers, is important to sustaining European honeybees and many other pollinators.
A few seed heads have a distinctive, and elaborately attractive (depending on the viewer’s perspective) appearance. The native vine Clematis reticulata has a labyrinthine entanglement surrounding its seeds.
The seeds of Netleaf Leather Flower (Clematis reticulata) are currently drying during autumn’s low humidity days. Once distributed, a few will germinate in spring to ensure the continuation of this species.
In the same genus with Clematis ornamentals found at garden centers, this plant produces purple blooms during the late spring and summer. This time of year, the flowers have been replaced with clusters of swirling white downy fibers several inches across.
These seeds can be relocated by birds in the spring, which use the material for nest construction, or by a washing rain that floats the nascent plant to a new germination site. Ideal locales have filtered light and well-drained soil.
The general recommendation for wildflower propagation in north Florida is to avoid mowing from April through September.
Late autumn or early winter mowing on rights-of-ways and mass plantings are critically important to the continuation of many wildflowers. Avoid mowing when plants are flowering if seeds are still maturing.
Seeds need a minimum of a month to mature after an individual flower has bloomed. Realize too that weather can alter flowering and seed setting by at least two weeks.
North Florida’s perennial plants and native trees use many of the same techniques as wildflowers for spreading seeds. Wind, animals and birds do the bulk of the scattering.
The seeds consumed by animals which are not digested pass through and are deposited in a new location, sometimes many miles from the parent plant. The tree or perennial plant will establish itself in a new area if all the necessary components for plant growth are present.
The seedy activity in late autumn leads to many positive results in spring, at least in the case of native plants.
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