Challenges with Fritillaria

[Angela Pai]

Hello, I was wondering if anyone has advice on collecting Fritillaria seeds to share.

We’ve been trying to collect Fritillaria brandegeei for several years, but of the populations we’ve monitored, we’ve observed hundreds of nurse leaves but very few plants seem to flower and even fewer produce fruit. We’ve also collected Fritillaria glauca and had similar issues — saw several desiccated flowers that never produced fruit, and, at slightly lower elevations, found <2% of the population in fruit.

Any suggestions or insight would be much appreciated!

[Sean Carson]

Hey Angela

We had similar difficulty collecting Fritillaria agrestis. We surveyed a hundred plants or so in 2021 and about half were flowering. We returned later and found that many of the flowering plants did not have mature fruit and even more were browsed by deer. We opted for not trying to collect that year.

In 2022 we visited a different location and found thousands of plants, with the majority flowering. We returned later and noticed similar observations but less deer browsing. Many of the plants had withered flowers/immature fruit capsules/ or only having one chamber maturing. We used jewelry’s bags ( https://www.amazon.com/Drawstring-Organza-Business-Bracelet-Packaging/dp/B09CYH4GBG/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=616931374762&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9031639&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=17099614274800028027&hvtargid=kwd-40286251889&hydadcr=24658_13611734&keywords=jewelry%2Bmesh%2Bbags&qid=1684862653&sr=8-1&th=1) on the larger fruit capsules. However, out of the thousands of plants, we were only able to collect 16 maternal lines.

We thought that low fruit development was caused by lack of pollinators, and the cold to hot fluctuations that site experienced. The site is full sun and we had a week of heat wave conditions during peak flowering that could of likely withered flowers before being pollinated. In short, that only way were were able to make a collection was by using mesh jewelry’s bags on larger developing fruits. Depending on your return visit after bagging , stems could likely desiccate and break off, so tying your bags to a pin flag as well would be a good idea.

Sean

[Angela Pai]

Thanks, Sean! It’s somewhat comforting to hear we’re not the only ones struggling with Fritillaria.

We were also hypothesizing that the low fruit development was from lack of pollinators and temperature/precipitation patterns, and we saw some deer browsing as well. It sounds like we may just have to try scouting larger populations with slightly different site conditions.

I’ve also been using organza bags and they’ve been working great when there are actually fruits to place them on. Thanks for the tip on pin flags — I’ll try that at our windier sites.

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