How To Collect Butterfly Bush Seed

Butterfly Bush Buddleja is a large arching perrenial shrub which blooms fragrant flowers from midsummer to fall.

 

 

To collect seed to grow your own butterfly bushes, you have to wait till September then you will see green seed pods beginning to form

 

 

A couple of weeks later they will start getting a red tip as they begin to ripen

 

 

A couple more weeks and the red will turn to brown throughout the seed pod and start to become woody

 

 

A couple more weeks after that the seed pods will be totally woody and begin to pop open, this is when the seed is ready to be harvested.

 

 

Now the seed are very small and really hard to separate from the chaff but I have found a great way of doing this with a hand held strainer like this one

 

 

All you do is break the seed pods apart add into this quarter of a cup strainer and gently tap on the side while positioning the strainer over a paper plate and out falls the butterfly bush seed 90 % chaff free

 

 

Now here is a close up of what a butterfly bush seed looks like (courtesy of Brenda Reynolds)

 

 

 You can actually see the orangish brown seed in this magnified photo :)

 

 

If your on facebook and want to trade seeds join us at Seed Traders