Silene pendula Seeds | Nodding Catchfly
LATIN NAME: Silene pendula
COMMON NAME: Nodding Catchfly
Plant Profile
Nodding Catchfly is a low annual of the central Mediterranean, forming a spreading mound twenty to forty centimetres across with narrow leaves and slender stems that each carry a nodding pink flower. In a cool spring a sown patch becomes a cushion of colour in eight to ten weeks.
Its flowers hang in bud, lifting to face the sun as each one opens, and the sticky stems that give catchflies their name trap small insects harmlessly. It is a plant for the front of a spring border, a wall edge or a pot, wherever a quick mass of pink is wanted. The seedlings appear in a week and grow without a check, which is why the plant is recommended to anyone sowing an annual border for the first time.
Science & Biotechnology
The genus Silene is one of the largest in the carnation family and a long-running study subject in systematics and ecology, with its sticky stems, its sex systems and its fungal interactions all worked over by researchers. Pendula is the Mediterranean annual side of the genus, grown in European gardens since the eighteenth century.
Its seed ripens in the calyx and shakes out over weeks, so a patch left standing will renew itself the following spring without any help. Ecologists have used its quick, single-season life cycle to test ideas about how annual plants time their seed production, since it flowers once and gambles everything on one pod set.
Uses & Benefits
Sown in autumn or early spring it fills the gap between the spring bulbs and the summer annuals, spilling from walls and edging paths. It is also a useful pollinator plant for early bees, and it needs no staking and no feeding.
In the trade it serves mostly as a quick colour plant for massed plantings and window boxes, where its habit of seeding itself is either a bonus or a matter of one hoeing. Its early nectar also makes it useful in a wildlife bed, because it flowers before most sown annuals are up and carries the bees through to the summer species.
Growing from Seed
Sow the seed a few millimetres deep in autumn where winters are mild, or in early spring elsewhere, pressing it into a fine surface.
Germination takes one to two weeks in cool soil; thin the seedlings to fifteen centimetres apart and keep them moist through establishment.
Deadheading prolongs the display, but leave a few stems to set seed if the patch is to renew itself; in hot districts a summer sowing for autumn flowering often succeeds better than a spring one. On light soils it prefers a slightly shaded position in the afternoon, which keeps the flowers open longer and stops the patch from setting seed all at once. A fortnight after sowing, a light watering with diluted seaweed feed sets the young plants up before the cold nights return.
Our Take
A quick pink cushion for the spring border or pot, nodding in bud and self-sowing politely where it is happy.
Related Reading
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