birthday seed-card

A card showed up at my desk, a few days early for my offi­cial birth­day. Some peo­ple can restrain them­selves from open­ing cards until the appointed day, but I’m not one of them!

Birthday Card 2009

The card was one of those that has wild­flower seeds incor­po­rated into the paper’s fibers–Maybe you’ve seen them? The basic idea is that you can enjoy the card, and then plant the pieces of paper and end up with flow­er­ing plants as the seeds ger­mi­nate and grow. I really like the idea.

Tree-Free Greet­ings of Swanzey, New Hamp­shire made the card, and the back of the card lists the species of seeds: sweet william, pinks, rocket lark­spur, can­dytuft, baby blue eyes, corn poppy, forget-me-not, wall­flower, columbine, zin­nia, lemon mint, five spot, catch­fly, Eng­lish daisy, sweet alyssum, spurred snap­dragon and black eyed Susan. At least two of them I rec­og­nize as being Cal­i­for­nia wild­flow­ers, baby blue eyes (Nemophila men­ziesii) and five spot (Nemophila mac­u­lata).

After my real birth­day, I’ll plan on cut­ting up the paper con­tain­ing the seeds, putting a small piece in each of sev­eral lit­tle pots, cov­er­ing the paper with a fine layer of seed mix, water­ing them in, and see­ing what comes up. I’ve always won­dered what effect paper-making–a wet process–has on the via­bil­ity of the seeds that are incor­po­rated into the pulp. By now you prob­a­bly know how much I like lit­tle exper­i­ments and adven­tures like this. This should be fun–I’ll keep you all posted!

December 11 2009 06:00 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • •

4 Responses to “birthday seed-card”

  1. ryan on 11 Dec 2009 at 5:10 pm #

    Very cool card. Some vari­ety in how the seeds ger­mi­nate, I would say. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see what comes up and how quickly they become iden­ti­fi­able.
    Happy birth­day a few days early.

  2. Lynn on 12 Dec 2009 at 7:28 am #

    Happy early Birth­day! I hope your wild­flow­ers bloom to bring you joy all year. We planted a sim­i­lar card, with some suc­cess (& ordi­nary pot­ting soil).

  3. tina on 12 Dec 2009 at 12:01 pm #

    Happy Birth­day to you James. And Happy Hol­i­days to you too.

  4. lostlandscape on 12 Dec 2009 at 3:49 pm #

    Thanks for the birth­day (and hol­i­day wishes) wishes, every­one! The seedlings from the birth­day card will be an inter­est­ing plant-identifying exer­cise when they germinate.

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