Daffodil Seeds

Eastern Oklahoma County, Oklahoma - information for and about.

Home
Address Labels
Family
Flowers & Plants
Genealogy
Schools
Seniors
Shopping
Sports

Daffodil Seeds

2008 was my year to try this, but my husband mowed my naturalized group down way earlier than usual while I was away. This is my notes - hopefully someone else will be able to make use of them this year or next.

Daffodils are easy to grow with minimal care.

Daffodils multiply in two ways: asexual cloning (bulb division) where exact copies of the flower will result, and sexually (from seed) where new, different flowers will result.

Seeds develop in the seed pod (ovary), the swelling just behind the flowerpetals. Most often, after bloom the seed pod swells but it is empty of seed. Occasionally, wind or insects can pollinate the flower during bloom by bringing new pollen from another flower. When this happens, the seed pod will contain one or a few seeds.

When the seedpod is almost ripe, the dried flower blossom will fall off, and you can often hear the seeds rattling around in the pod. This is a good time to pick it, to avoid losing the seed on the ground. If you wait too long, and you find a dry open pod, the seed is gone.

Daffodil seed isn’t all that rare and it isn’t all that hard to start. Here’s how.

To begin with, species daffodils can be pollinated and produce seed. You’ll recognize the seed pods as lumpy – well pods – that turn harder and brown after the flowers have faded.

Where is the seed pod?
The pod will be formed behind the flower so this means that once the flower has faded, do NOT cut off or deadhead the stem. Wait for the seed pod to turn brown.

Do All Daffodils Produce Seed Pods?
In my experience - no.

Some of the doubles and “weird” flower shapes do not seem to set seed readily. But most do.

When Do I Harvest the Seed
The easiest time is to wait until the pod just starts to shrink or shrivel up a little after it has turned brown. Some of them will even start to open up from the end - this definitely means they are ripe.

This usually means the seed is mature. Remove the seed from the pod to plant.

What Now?

keep the seed cool and dry for a month or so and then sow the seed in a baggie half-filled with damp vermiculite. I put this in the frig crisper so it stays cool and damp for 90 days.

I then simply put the seed into a pot filled with good, weed-free artificial soil (like Promix), barely cover the seed, water with luke warm water, and let it germinate at room temperature.

Sometimes you don’t even have to use the pre-cooling but can simply sow them in pots in the spring. You won’t get as high a germination this way but it does work for some of the seeds.

The seed will look like bits of grass.

How Do I Grow Them Up?

The easiest thing is to devote a section of garden to them. Treat them as if they were tiny, tender onions (pretty much the way they are). Handle carefully and transplanting the daffodil seed at the same depth they were in the pot.

No weeds allowed in this garden area!

Use gentle compost tea and compost for fertilizers.

Do not let them suffer from too much drought the first year. In fact, the first few weeks after transplanting, I wouldn’t let the soil dry out too much at all – remember they are very shallow rooted.

Good strong sun although noon shade is great for the very early seedlings to protect them from drying out.

When Do They Bloom?
If you have fertile soil and take good care of them, you can expect to see small blooms in the third year. But the fourth year is likely.

It's a lot of work. Essentially, you're growing onions for two years and then digging/moving them to another garden location. Lots of weeding, lots of digging.

But a heck of a lot of bulbs. And there will be a great variety of flower shapes as you're taking seed from a hybrid. You'll never know what you're going to get.

Hybridizers grow daffodils from seed to try to produce new varieties. The problem with it is that it takes a really long time to get a blooming size bulb from seed. Typical is maybe five years. That said, daffodils that naturalize well are seeding themselves, so if you have a naturalized planting you should see seedlings popping up sooner or later. The initial foliage is very thin, I usually find them about a flower stems length away from the original clump. 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. The seeds are ripe when they literally rattle in the seedpod or the pod is about to burst open. They should be black then. Some people plant them right away, others wait and plant in late summer. Apparently they can also be stored...In general, Narcissus (or daffodil) seed presents no particular problem with germination. Like most seed of this type, it will readily germinate (when planted in June soon after harvest) with the cooler temperatures and abundant moisture of fall. If harvested in June but not planted until September/October there may be some retarded germination but it isn't obvious the following spring. Only when the seed has been kept out of the ground for a year, or longer, before planting will there be retarded germination or failure to germinate. I have done this (for various reasons) over the years and found that nothing will appear above ground for at least one complete season after planting. This indicates that the seed as it dries in preparation for an extended dormancy develops inhibitors in the seed coat. The seeds go from plump, shiny-black in appearance to smaller and matte-black. The suggestion that seeds be soaked prior to planting has never occurred to me to try with year old daffodil seed. I am going to try that in the future to see what happens! I have a feeling that that seed may germinate normally, in season, after the soaking process removes inhibitors present in the outer coating that are dependent on rainfall to leach out. Chilling daffodil seed would have no particular effect, I would think, as they grow in many areas about the world that do not have particularly cold winters. Tazettas, for example, are native to the countries around the Mediterranean and were probably carried eastward by travelers on the Silk Road to China.

source: http://www.flower-garden-bulbs.com/daffodil-seed.html
http://www.flower-garden-bulbs.com/sowing-daffodil-seed.html
http://www.daffodilusa.org/daffodils/faq.html