In article , Roscoe
writes
---------------------
Last year and the year before I did just as you recommend, gathered field
poppy seedheads. Shook the seeds out around the wildflower part of my garden
and guess what? Not one germinated. The same with teasels and white
campion. I asked for advice from a gardening friend who said that he
thought that my soil is far too rich for wild flowers and that they will
only grow in impoverished soil. Why then do I have red campion and alkanet
growing very happily almost everywhere?

It's not that plants actively *dislike* rich soils, it's that some
plants aren't strong enough to compete against some of the other thugs.
There are then two ways to evolve - either become a thug yourself, or
specialise in colonising soils which are too poor for the thugs to
survive.

Corn field poppies are annuals. It's difficult for an annual to develop
thuggish tendencies (though goosegrass has managed it ;-) ). The
poppy's strategy is to produce a large quantity of seed that remain
viable for very many years, and germinate quickly when exposed to light.
So when the ground is disturbed, eg ploughed for sowing corn, the poppy
is in there and away.

But it won't manage to compete against more thuggish plants.

Alkanet is a real thug. I wouldn't have thought of red campion as a
thug, but it is a perennial. If you want to get white campion and teasel
going, sow them in seed trays and plant out as small plants - we've
established white campion in a meadow by doing that.

There's no point trying that with poppies as they are annuals, and
fairly spindly ones at that - by the time they're big enough to
transplant, they're already flowering and aren't going to last much
longer.
--
Kay Easton

Edward's earthworm page:
http://www.scarboro.demon.co.uk/edward/index.htm