Tag: Scarlet Pea

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Scarlet pea process

Scarification of some kind is needed for quick germination of Indigofera miniata. I decided to nick each seed manually.
01/08/2024. The seeds swelled up ready to go within 24 hours! if you look very carefully you can see a few little roots emerging on a few seeds.
01/11/2024. More roots come out after a few days of light!
01/15/2024. These cotelydons (seed leaves) are opening in the container that had a clear lid! Two seed cases had fuzzy gray mold so I picked that off with tweezers the day before.
01/15/2024. This baby is emerging from the six-pack cells. It’s sort of yellow even though we have the grow lights right on them. For the open cells (no cover), I’ve been watering them by flooding the tray so the water soaks up.

I still have more of this species nicked. I think what I’ll do with the rest is plant them directly; they seem to imbibe water very fast which means they’ll probably sprout in spring rains. I forgot to inoculate them with any of the inoculum I bought from prairie moon nursery but I believe you can add it later if you disturb the roots a bit. If this species even needs it. Mysteries.

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11/26/2023 minor plant miracle!

My seemingly giant finger pointing at a very tiny sprig of green emerging from an otherwise gray stem.
I was examining the stems and base of the two scarlet peas we dug up in early fall from the doomed prairie (sold for building on) in town. I’ve been watering both since we moved them. Today I noticed a tiny green shoot emerging from one stem of one plant! I’m going to try to grow this species from seed too but it’s nice to know at least one made it.
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06/11/2023 roots

Unless you’re taking a herbarium specimen or moving stuff in the garden, we often don’t see how deep some native plant roots are. Today I helped two friends rescue plants from a remnant prairie that is about to be dozed and built on. (We dug with permission.)

A Winecup had the taproot I’ve read about but it was concentrated near the surface. This seems likely to live.
I figured this big milkweed has a very deep root so we didn’t try it.
Briar sat in the shade of encroaching cedar trees and helped check the reference book.
A cute hopper insect!
The Pediomelium/Psoralea type legume had a long thin root. The end broke so we shall see if it lives.
Scarlet pea had a very long root. Again we’ll see how it grows!

Spiderworts, native perennial dayflower, an all yellow Gaillardia, fleabane, western horse nettle, and Heterotheca (I think?) all came up easily with a sharpshooter shovel. Little bluestem has very deep roots but I think they are supposed to be okay to divide. Fern acacia (I think??) had a longer root (over a foot for a 6” tall plant) that may have broken.

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08/13/2022 walking around

A mystery yellow composite flower along the sidewalk. Update: Mom and Abby have identified as camphorweed, probably Heterotheca subaxillaris. Camphorweeds are native.
Leaves and stem of the yellow flowered plant.
This picture is from yesterday (08/12/2022) but there are lots of Grindelia getting ready to bloom near the railroad tracks. A few had opened up by today.
I was also pleased to find 2-3 Scarlet Pea plants along the sidewalk near the Grindelia yesterday. They were still blooming today.
Downstream from the OU duck pond there is a somewhat hidden bridge and there was a native hibiscus blooming near it.
A few tiny annual coreopsis were in the field near the creek. Before it got mowed this spring there were a lot more and taller.
It was too hot. We gave Briar and ourselves some ice cubes upon returning.
She has taken to resting her chin on her ice cubes after getting a drink from her water bowl.