Day Lily Seeds
A side view of the pod showing the seeds inside.

Managed to get out to the garden with the kids today and did a little bit of fall clean-up. Today I focused on trimming the lily seed heads and collecting the seeds. From what I’ve read on-line, growing lilies from seed is a bit of a hit and miss project and I’ll have refrigerate these seeds for three weeks before planting and then start the seedlings in the spring in our cold frame. Some sites say that it can take as long as a year and a half before I’ll see any flowers others predict up to three. And I might have waited too long to harvest – hard to say.

Day Lily Seeds
The black seeds of a day lily at the base of a pod.

What I did notice was that there were a number of invertebrates busy working on the seeds themselves. Most had a few small wood bugs, a token earwig (that scuttled off too fast to photograph) and an odd beetle or two. I’m not sure on exactly what kind of beetle this is. It’s probably fairly common and I’m sure that there are gardeners out there who have an idea of what it is. It definitely isn’t the introduced Scarlet Lily Beetle (Lilioceris lilii) but has a similar shape.

Unknown Beetle
There were several of these unidentified beetles found with the day lily seeds.

They were interesting to watch and A. got a kick out of counting them and the seeds. I’d love to find out what kind of beetles these are so let me know if you have an idea of what they are.

11 thoughts on “Amongst the Lily Seeds

  1. Looks like the white-fringed weevil (Naupactus leucoloma), originally from South America but introduced worldwide. It feeds on many types of plants and is often considered a pest.

  2. Thanks Marisa – it’s always interesting to take a closer look at things in one’s backyard!

  3. Thanks Lisa – it’s always difficult getting just the right amount of the image in focus. Not sure that I got it quite right but thanks for the complement and for stopping in!

  4. Thanks Ted – appreciate the help with identifying this beetle. I’ll have to update the post!

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