Seed Collecting

By the end of May, our long views down the terraces of the woods garden are difficult to imagine.  The canopy has filled out and we are walled in green as we walk along the forest paths.  In the fall and winter we walked these paths slowly.  We stooped frequently to observe the blooms of cyclamen, hellebores, primroses, and the many other plants that delight us during cool months.  On those chilly walks we carried paintbrushes to hand-pollinate species and forms whose populations we hope to increase.  Now, in the heat, we hurry down the paths checking our favorite plants for ripe seeds.

A Cyclamen coum f. albissimum, whose pure white flowers we could once spot from fifty feet, now is difficult to find as it enters dormancy.  We gently search the ground near the center of the plant for its fruits which ripen on tightly coiled stems.  If we arrive too late, the fruit will have opened and ants will have carried off the precious, sugar-covered seeds.  We rush to our best old primroses, who themselves seem to be rushing to produce their seeds before the harsh summer weather drives the plants underground.   

Each afternoon, we return to the potting room bearing our harvest.  We alphabetize our envelopes of seeds and discuss best sowing methods.  The relentless bustle of spring weeding, planting, and mulching takes most of our time, but we dream of winter plants even as the garden erupts around us with poppies and roses.  The cycle of the garden year keeps us in the past, present, and future at once.  The same week we are harvesting seeds from several cyclamen species, Cyclamen purpurascens is just beginning to bloom.  Is it the last species in that genus to flower, or the first?