Hi all, I bought a new wild flower mixed seed pack at the start of the summer, lots of grown but I’m very confused how certain things were included in these packs.
I have had massive Amaranthus caudatus grow (which I figured out from searching online).
This seems really odd for them to be apart of a wildflower meadow mix?
Has anyone else found this?
I have attached photos for you to see
by ExactContract7775
3 Comments
It depends where you bought your wildflower mix. Places like Amazon eBay and supermarkets just want your money and will sell any old stuff without verifying which continent the plants are actually from. Amaranthus is a wildflower in South America so they’re not technically lying. I’ve not used them but there are UK based wildflower seeds sellers who will list the varieties in the mix. The amaranthus look great though (and bigger than mine ☹️)
I use Emorsgate wild flowers – all true natives sourced from the UK.
Ive never found reliable native seeds from any shops, as u/beachyfeet says, so many are just about the money. It’s such a shame as so many people are trying to do the right thing by buying native and arsehole companies are lying and ripping them off
A lot of “wildflower” mixes like this are very much *not* wildflowers but ornamental annuals. You also have morning-glories (very much not a native, those are from the Americas) and cornflowers (a bit dubious, not native, certainly was a frequent ancient introduction – though was never truly naturalised).
Those mixes still have value! You can tip them somewhere and get a nice tapestry of things that’ll be gone for next year, great if you want to have a bed of *something*. But they aren’t really what you want if you’re going for “native wildflowers”.