£6.50
10 in stock
Over dense foliage clumps come a mass of arching stems bearing dense pincushion flowers in a rich range of pastel pink shades. An easily grown and rewarding plant for full sun. 2-3ft
10 in stock
Over dense foliage clumps come a mass of arching stems bearing dense pincushion flowers in a rich range of pastel pink shades. Knautia macedonica Melton Pastels is an easily grown and rewarding plant for full sun. 2-3ft
I thought I would write a small piece on the intricate flower structure that scabious exhibit with the tight pincushion centre and flamboyant outer petals. Each individual flower head is in fact a compound flower just like the daisies. A tight dome of individual florets makes up the central disc. The flowers making up the central disc florets and those more showy outer ray florets are essentially the same. All are basically trumpet like tubes, its just that the outer ones develop more colour and have much more flamboyant petals. It’s a case of scaling rather than form. Within the disc, the male stamens are held close to the flowers throat whilst the female pistil projects well out. This gives the flower its pincushion form. The often contrasting colours of each flower type and the colours of the stamens and pistil are what make theses flowers so attractive.
The flowers of Cephalaria, Knautia, Succisa and Succisella all follow a similar pattern, each with a decreasing emphasis on the large outer flowers.
If you look closely at the unopened flower you can see that the individual florets arrange themselves in two spirals, one to the right and one to the left. It is a characteristic that shows up better in some species than others. What is fascinating about these spirals is that the number of spirals each direction will be different and they will be found to be two adjacent numbers on the Fibonacci sequence. (ie 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 a sequence made up by adding the previous number each time). This is an adaptation that allows the most flowers to fit in a given space with the least gap. Furthermore, it is not the only place you can find the Fibonacci sequence in plants. Plants always have the same number of petals in their flowers. The numbers plants use are those on the Fibonacci sequence – Plants really can count.
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