Friday’s seed and plant portrait – Lomelosia olgae

All late fall flowering species are precious, not only for our solace (the winter is coming!) but also for the pollinators; the food sources are getting scarce at this time.

Lomelosia olgae is one of them.
Looking like a Scabiosa but not quite the same, this species hails from the North Caucasus and Transcaucasus regions.

The flowers and the fruits are very similar with those of a Scabiosa. The foliage though is quite particular, with gray-green entire lanceolate leaves, felty (pubescent) underneath. The flowering stems are decumbent, a habit which I think is not only because of my garden conditions.
Pictures on inaturalist,images taken in the wild habitat, often show it with the same growing habit in most cases.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/777648-Lomelosia-olgae/browse_photos

We can get inspired by these wild images and cultivate it over a stone wall, or in a large rockery flowing down among boulders.
Having neither of them in my garden, it contents with the edge of a slightly raised plant bed. It grows well in full sun or part-shade and proves to be drought resistant.
There are still flower buds developing in October, which is another character I appreciate: the long flowering period, staggered over a few weeks in late fall.
We will only know later in the season if there will be enough fruits/seeds to be offered on the Seed List this year.

The Lomelosia fruit is an achene, enclosed in a persistent involucel, and usually it is sown as a whole. This involucel serves a protective function for the fruit. The achene can be removed by gently squeezing the involucel but most often it will be damaged (like seen in the image to the left). 

The calyx of the flower remains attached and it looks like a coronet on top of the involucel; an achene with a crown :)

So, again, we do not see the actual seeds when sowing, we don’t even see the fruits! Not all flowers get pollinated and sometimes the involucels contain no fruits (not always easy to observe).

Germination wise,  Lomelosia olgae, it is a warm germinator (at room temperature) just like Scabiosa species.

*Named in honor of Olga Alexandrovna Fedchenko, Russian botanist (1845-1921) with immense contributions especially to Flora of Central Asia.

**New orders are accepted starting Monday October 20th!