The other week I was given some echium seed by a lady who thrust a handful of chaff into my hands and said, ''here, see what you can do with these". I questioned her and It seems I may have echium wildpretii--how lucky am I ?

After soaking them in water for 24 hours, they were planted in 50 mm (2 inch) individual tubes.Of the 10 seeds, 5 germinated with 7 days and a further one has popped its head up.
I haven't grown E.wildpretii before, but have always wanted to.They certainly are majestic, towering to 3 metres and being monocarpic, flower, set seed and die within two years.And what a bee magnet! They also are drought tolerant.
What echiums are you growing? Please post pictures if available.

I was not familiar with Echium. I Googled it. Wow, very pretty.

I hadn't heard of them either. They are pretty! Don't forget to post photos when they bloom!

You are lucky ! I've been looking for those seeds for awhile now.

@vanozzi There is a photo of a seedling Tower of Jewels (Echium wildpretii)in the Database. We have been growing them for three years here at hamilton square. Seedlings are few to germinate even with tens of thousands of them. The birds eat many of the seeds. The seedlings are now about four inches accross with a rosette of leaves flat to the ground. We grow several Echiums(9) here at Hamilton Square and there are photos of all of them in the ATP database. Four of them have seeded. I,ll photograph the some of the other seedlings and the older E. wildpretti sometime in the following week.

Here is "Tower of Jewels" at two months. There is a brick at the bottom for size comparison.

This is at four months.



This one is starting to tower and even though these are considered biennials this one is three years old.


This is a group of "Pride of Madeira" That have sprouted at various times over the winter months.

G'day Leslieray, well...I'm a little red-faced It seems I have 6 splendid pea plants!!

After looking at your seedling picture, it was plain to see my seedlings in no way matched your image.The lady who gave me the seeds actually had them in a mess on the carpet in the back of her car, she just sorta grabbed a handful of chaff and gave it to me.As I had not grown them before, I had no idea what the individual seed looked like.There were 10 small fat round seeds that I located and planted, unknown pea seed lol.

I have a ''Pride of Madeira'' with dried flower bracks, so I have picked one and after rummaging through it, small black seed somewhat resembling shark teeth, was located. So I well and truly now know what echium seed looks like !!

Luckily, I still have the bowl with the original ''wildpretii'' seed, so I have now sown the lot, chaff and all, in one pot.

So thankyou Leslieray of Hamilton Square , and I look forward to more images of your beautiful echiums.

Good luck. They are a very beautiful plant as a large rosette for the first year. The towers are spectacular and worth the wait.. We plan to keep a rotation going so that each year we have them in bloom.

What a cool plant! Too bad it doesn't live like Yucca and come back year after year.