Collecting immature seeds

[bob prohaska]

I'd like to collect some common vetch seeds from roadside patches to see if they're useful as groundcover. In this (very dry) year the bloom is good, which augurs well for drought tolerance.

Collecting fully-ripe seeds is difficult. The county mows road shoulders at irregular intervals, making the plants hard to find at all and scattering what seeds might be present.

I've tried grabbing a few whole plants at random times, hoping to find a few mature pods, but it seems that if visible flowers are present essentially no pods are filled out. Once bloom ceases the plants are surprisingly hard to find among the other weeds.

Is there any technique to help unripe pods mature enough to yield viable seeds, either left attached to the plant stem or taken off? Might putting the cut stems, with pods, in water like cut flowers allow any useful development?

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

[Leon Fisk]

<snip>

Crown vetch was commonly used as a roadside cover... It was a bad mistake, it is highly invasive. See:

There are a lot of "vetches". Just be careful collecting along the roadside and which one you're getting :)

That said you can just order/buy Common Vetch (Vicia sativa) seed:

[bob prohaska]

Understood, I'm confident this is not crown vetch. The flower are puple, the plant is annual.

That would work, but it's going to be an alien variety. The plants growing along local roads are already adapted to climate and soil here. And, they're free if I can find them among the weeds... Tolerance of local conditions is mostly what I'm after.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

[David E. Ross]

If you pick them before they are ready, seeds will not mature. You might try digging up a plant and potting it to keep it alive until its seeds mature naturally.

[bob prohaska]

Granted, if I pick just the pod too early there's no hope. I was wondering if taking a substantial cutting and keeping it hydrated to some extent might promote at least partial maturation.

Plantnapping isn't exactly a crime, but it's more work and getting late in the season...

8-)

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

[David E. Ross]

On 4/25/2021 7:25 PM, bob prohaska wrote [in part]:

[snipped]

[snipped]

That might work with a perennial or woody plant. It almost never works with annuals. The only annual I ever saw as an exception was a marigold. One summer, I grew some tall merigolds and made a bouquet of them for my wife. After a week, I went to change the water in the vase and discovered the stems had put out roots into the water. The bouquet lasted several weeks.

[bob prohaska]

Well, that proves it's possible. I'll grab a bunch and try to keep it moist on the way home, then stick the stems in water. I don't really expect roots, a little more development of the pods would be helpful. If not, it was cheap entertainment...

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

[bob prohaska]

I've collected a few bunches of vetch with both pods and flowers. Some pods have been detached, to dry separately. Some whole bunches are drying intact, so see if it makes a difference. Another bunch or two have been placed with stems in water, to see if keeping them a little hydrated helps any.

One thing I haven't seen are any obviously ripe pods, even from the bottom of apparently-old plants. All pods are bright green, much like snow peas. Pods at the bottom of the plants have obvious seeds, but none are filled to the extent seen with snow peas, which fill the pod to near-bursting when close to ripe.

What does a ripe common vetch pod look like? Links to photos would be ideal, photos found so far are mostly of flowers and leaves.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

[Leon Fisk]

<snip>

You may be able to find something here:

[invalid unparseable]

I tried it as a ground cover for my slopes in the back yard years ago when it was widely used along roads in neighboring PA. Stared growing nicely but disappeared. Turned out the deer loved it.

[bob prohaska]

Frank <"frank "@frank.net> wrote: [regarding common vetch]

The only herbivores in my yard are fox squirrels. Whether they'll be a problem with vetch is unclear, but they're becoming destructive to pecan catkins.

Apart from lack of persistence did you observe any objectionable features of the vetch?

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska

[bob prohaska]

That is a most impressive site.

The only ripe pod image I could find was

is from New Zealand. If that's what mine need to look like I'm nowhere close to having ripe pods.

Everything I have looks like a miniature snow pea with visible seeds. This picture is close:

Thanks very much for writing!

bob prohaska

[Leon Fisk]

<snip>

Shouldn't matter, that is why Latin names are used. Should be the same plant whether growing here or over there. Only question would be if it was properly ID'd...

Same site but a bit different search parameters. A lot of these images are from herbariums in the USA. Dried/pressed specimens...

It seems like yours are a bit immature yet...

[invalid unparseable]

It had been quite a while but it was growing nicely. Cannot remember how I planted it. I had same experience with ivy which deer would eat in winter. I had a lot of both on my banks and not a trace now and have of late been fighting Japanese stilt grass and sticky weed.

There is also shade to consider. Deer do not eat pachysandra but it appears to like shade and I do not see it in sunny areas.

[badgolferman]

Refrigerator?

[bob prohaska]

bob prohaska [e-mail]> wrote: [in regards to collecting roadside common vetch seeds]

It turns out a few pods will ripen after a plant is pulled. Keeping the stems wet might help a little, but it didn't help very much.

In the end several large clumps of vetch were pulled up and placed in a bag to dry slowly. A small fraction of pods, presumably the oldest, filled out and released seeds. I'll try to start a few now, to check viability, and save the rest to plant in the spring.

Thanks for everybody's attention,

bob prohaska

[Leon Fisk]

Thanks for the follow up. Kinda wondered how you made out :)

I noticed this picture:

Was reported to have been taken on June 14 in Tennessee. Don't know where your at but may give you some clue as to when they ripen. Maybe keep on eye on where you got your plants too. I know around here the brush hogs don't get everything and some plants recover pretty quick afterwards...

[bob prohaska]

I'm about 20 miles west-southwest of Sacramento, CA. Much, much dryer than Tennessee.

That image is rather different from what I'm collecting. It's shaped like a green bean, longer and thinner than what I'm dealing with. The pods I'm seeing are much shorter, usually with only 4-6 seeds. Much lighter in color also, being no darker than pale brown. Superficially they resemble snow peas, but shorter and at about quarter scale.

This past winter recorded only about eight inches of rain, perhaps the local vetch would look more like the photos in a wetter environment. Normal for this area is just shy of 20 inches. At this point the growing season is over outside of irrigated areas. Despite that, the local vetch grew quite luxuriantly during the very brief wet interval.

I've already put a few of the collected seeds into potting mix to see if they do anything. If they grow, good. If they don't I'll put the rest of the seeds in the fridge and hope for the best.

Thanks for reading!

bob prohaska