Helianthella uniflora
I just visited a tiny-but-rich remnant of Palouse prairie, and it was wall-to-wall with these flowers. I now have a bunch of clumps of these coming up, but for years I struggled with these and certain other native flowers--that, for the life of me, I could not get them to sprout. As with many parts of this project, I have had to learn by doing, and when you get something wrong in a long-term project like this, it can be several years turning that ship around! The conventional wisdom on growing native flowers is that you clear some dirt and gently rake the seeds into the top 1/4" or so. There are certainly plants for which that method works, but definitely not for this one, or Gaillardia, or Sticky geranium, or Balsamroot, etc. So, when I got my grant from the Palouse Conservation District, I had my first contact with some plant experts who told me about the 1/4" raking thing, I took their advice, and as a result... I wasted a lot of seed. In addition, plants that were not very long-lived (like Gaillardia) started fading away because new plants weren't being established. In fact, because voles like to eat the roots, I had lost ALL but one of the original Gaillardia whose seed I had collected down the road (future post on those--they are just coming on now).
Now, to the credit of these experts, they understood that recreating Palouse prairie was a new thing--apparently I am among the first people who have tried it. After the failure of the rake method, I returned to my "divot" method--dig a few shovelfuls of dirt, turn it over, and break it up, and work the seed into the top inch or so. And since then I have gotten all the species that failed in the years I was raking in seed. I informed the expert who had advised me otherwise, and he said he appreciated my sharing my experience because they really don't know how best to do this. I did a couple of posts on my rake-versus-divot experiments a few years ago...
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