And just to remind you all (I'm grinning at my current Trainee, who struggles with this one), it's pronounced K'Tony-aster.
Not cotton-easter. K'Tony-Aster.
Every year this K'Tony-Aster produces hundreds of berries, which blanket the ground underneath the tree - it's partly in a shrubbery, partly overhanging the lawn.
I rake up the berries on the beds with ease, but it's a lot harder to get them out of the lawn, and a lot of them get "squashed" into the grass as people walk over them
So why is this lawn not knee-deep in Cotoneaster seedlings, I wonder?
In fact, I wonder this every year! I have yet to see a single seedling, in the lawn or in the bed, which seems odd, bearing in mind the sheer volume of them.
So why isn't there an equivalent Cotoneaster seedling forest?
Or the jokey "Cotton Easter"...
ReplyDelete...but to answer your question see https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_series/wo/wo_ah727/wo_ah727_442_446.pdf Stratification and weed removal for 5 years are suggested if raising from seed. Passing through the digestive tract of a bird might also help.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mal, that's fascinating - I had no idea that K'tony-aster were so hard to propagate, as in other gardens, I do find seedlings popping up all over the place. There's one in particular which is very free-seeding, I must make an effort to identify it. It's not a particularly nice one, certainly not as lovely as this one, it's more of a scruffy upright shrub. Ironic but unsurprising that the desirable one is hard to propagate, and the unlovely one is easy peasy!
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