Pulsegleaner
Garden Master
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No I don't know (though it is information I probably should know before growing them myself). The fact they are so readily available indicates it probably isn't all that rare an occurrence, and the fact I saw a mature pod on a plant once at the Bronx Botanical Garden indicates that it probably doesn't involve some insect we do not have here (unless they did it themselves, in which case, why they would leave a mature pod that had popped open on the plant without collecting the seeds is beyond me*.)Speaking of fertilizing itself, do you know how Butterfly Peas get pollinated? a.k.a get viable seeds from them? Last year I had 2 plants (next to each other) and no pods were formed once the blossoms fell. This year unfortunately I only have the one plant. I'd like to collect some seed since the seeds from Richter's are either old or the species is a sporadic germinator. I think fresh seeds would be better to get an earlier start. Online searches turn up only convoluted and contradicting answers.
But as for getting fresh seeds, just go on Etsy and put in Clitoria (Butterfly Pea's genus name) and narrow down the search to seeds and plants. You'll be spoiled for choice, there must be several hundred people who have it, in many colors** and forms (single or double)
I have no idea on that. I THINK ear number is determined by genetics, but I'm not sure. I do know most modern corns are bred to only make one ear per plant (so the ear is as large as possible), so multiple ears would be an older trait. I think all of my plants have only one ear, but they are all smallish plants (especially the one or two that are only one foot tall or so), so one ear is probably all they can handle.I noticed something odd about my corn today. Usually when I've grown any kind of corn the cob numbers per plant are more or less the same. I took a patient look today and saw that the cob numbers are really diverse - some have 4 cobs, some have 1. I have a couple thoughts about this; the corn itself 'Rootbeer' is a selection from 'Cassiopeia' and maybe there is some variability in there? Could that be? Seems odd to me. The other thing is I've watered them with a hose standing at the front of the patch and no question the front received more water overall for the past 2 months. It's the plants closest to where I stood watering that have mostly 4 cobs each. Whereas the back of the patch which got the least seems to have many plants with one cob each. The middle seems to all be less than 4, but hard to tell since at 1 foot apart each way I can't get in there to really check. The last thing is that the front of the patch is nearest my fertilizer pole and no question that those plants closest to it all have the 4 cobs, the middle to back of that patch is totally out of the range of the pole. This is a new experience for me with corn. Very strange.
* The Bronx Botanical garden seems sort of variable in how carefully they clean up after the shedding plants. The very first time I went on a school trip as a kid, the main room's floor was COVERED with dropped silk tree flowers (or, some legume flowers that looked like silk tree flowers) and there were quite a lot of palm seeds in the cracks between the paving stones, indicating they hadn't swept those up either (and they probably should have, having piles of oily seeds all over the ground would probably attract a lot of rats.)
** Though you may want to steer away from lavender unless you are an expert. A lot of people who think they have lavender flowered butterfly pea actually have spurred butterfly pea (Centrosema) so assuming you care what you get, you need to be able to both trust the dealer and know what the two seeds look like (spurred seeds are brown (as opposed to black), vaguely bean like in shape with the hilum on the side (not the edge of the side, like regular) and have dark brown streaks edged with gold (not those little white dots the standard has).
Also stay with ternetata . The other species have some problems, fairchilda (butterfly pea tree) is really had to get to germinate and the other one (macrophylla) there I'm fairly sure is Centrosema again.
CORRECTION- Avoid the PINK, not the lavender. Personally, there are some white and blue variegated and highlighted ones I think are quite attractive.
Oh and I'm going to try matrima next year.
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