Lunaria is a show stopper stained glass plant that lasts for years

Derry Journal

Lunaria (Honesty) is a biennial native to the Balkans that has naturalised easily elsewhere in the world but is not considered invasive nor a threat to native flora in Ireland or Britain. It provides early nectar and pollen and pretty purple flowers in early spring before transforming to produce striking pearlescent seed pods that last in dried arrangements for years.

Transcript

00:00so today we're going to be talking about we're just going to focus on one plant today i was

00:21going to do this throughout the summer and that plant is honesty and if there's one plant i'd

00:28recommend for flowering and then for use afterwards it would be this one as you can see here we have

00:35some dried seed heads that i've been shelling and this is all the shells and you can see on them

00:46the different seeds

00:49and what you do and i'll show you in a moment so these are all these are all cut from the garden

00:55they produce purple flowers over the spring and they're biennial so you sow them one year and

01:03they flower the next and they've flowered in april when very little else is flowering so they're an

01:09early food for the bees the bees love them you can see how tall some of the stems get there

01:14and then once you start shelling them and we'll just take a little one on with this and you end up with

01:28this these pearlescent uh white discs look like stained glass whenever the light hits them

01:37it's a bit of a dull morning here but you have these papery

01:44seed seed pods inside the seed pods actually you get these papery white

01:50um discs that give the plant its name lunaria name for the moon and then it's also known as honesty

02:01and silver pennies which is self-explanatory when you look at it and then

02:08all i don't and here as well i've got some dried bunny grass and see there

02:14they work quite well together but a great dried plant and they will keep for a couple of years

02:23and how i have worked with it was once the seed heads have formed i left them on the plant out the

02:31back for about a month so that i can collect the seeds as well and replant more over the next few weeks

02:38for next year and then just chop them down and hung them up to dry like this

02:48and then you'll know when they're ready to go because you'll feel that they're able to they're

02:55papery and they're able to shift and the outer leaves will just come off so you take off the two

03:02outer leaves and if you're rubbing them rub them like from that part of the plant rather than the delicate

03:15and our leaf and then just gently pull them apart

03:19you can see underneath there is the silvery white

03:27inner part and that's the part where the seeds are held

03:30they should stick to the other leaf with that seed pod and there you go and that's how it works

03:42so we'll shell a few now that's a good idea to have a basin or a bucket or something underneath

03:49see why you do this because the seeds tend to go everywhere and let's see if i can do that here

04:02tricky holding the camera so i've just one branch here a really small branch and all you do is

04:11just rub it and you'll see there that should come off just drop it in the bucket

04:20and then you take that

04:25the outer shell rub that again and then go right around the edge

04:30you don't want to damage the you will damage some of them but

04:34there's usually so many that it doesn't really matter if you snap any off

04:39go right around

04:40and then this is you need two hands for this really

04:52look at that

05:00now you can see

05:01that's the new one we just did and they'll have a greenish tint from the outer coating they start

05:08with but after it they are so they'll turn this much more

05:13it's lighter much more brilliant white

05:20for it has some white color and that's

05:24glenaria honesty and as i say great for crafts i've seen people make reefs from them as well

05:31and they're supposed to be good fortune as well honestly

05:39very unusual plant i've never seen anything else like that that produces seed heads like this

05:44so

05:44and they grow really well in our climate in ireland as well so

05:50very easy to grow from seed don't need any special treatment and it's now june i will

05:56or sorry it's now the start of july and i will get more of these sown

06:03this month before next year and plant them out they survive the frost no problem

06:09you can put them in pots they have a taproot so they prefer being on the ground

06:12so the taproot can go right down and pull up nutrients and that improves the soil as well

06:18so when i cut them down i left the plant underground just leave it there that'll still

06:24keep feeding the organisms in the soil uh over until as it decomposes and

06:33and all these here once i collect the seeds from them i'm going to leave them to dry out just a

06:38wee bit more and the seeds will naturally fall off to the bottom anyway there's a load of seeds at

06:43the bottom but uh i will go through them and pick off any other seeds and then just sew them so you

06:50don't have to buy any more and you can do that then year on year you might see some honestly

06:57growing wild they were a very popular plant back in the 70s and 80s but they've fallen out of flavor

07:04and and i think with all the arts and crafts things going on they will come back in favor

07:11is one that didn't make it on the stem and these are some leaves as well you can just pull these off

07:18as you're drying but these make a great mulch as well so once you have these done just throw these all

07:24over your soil and they will decompose quickly because they're so thin and name honestly comes

07:32from the fact that when you hold them up to the light you can see how many seeds are in them when

07:39they're on the stem so i have that this one there

07:51that's the way they look on the plant but they're stunning in the landscape as well if you want to

07:55just leave them there but the only thing is that the wind and the rain here would damage them and

08:01you'll get some caterpillars and things i'm feeding on them too so you could leave some uh but they do

08:12look quite quite nice these big discs swaying in the wind and the stems are quite sturdy as well

08:19um but as i say you won't get as many clean dried plants

08:24as you would otherwise but that's honestly let me just go back over it and look at them again

08:38close

08:40so happy soon

08:54happy soon

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