Cosmos 'Seashells Mixed' now flowering

cosmos are beautiful, mine didnt do at all well this year.

These are lovely. Mine were a great disappointment and only a couple looked like yours - the rest had their petals rolled round into individual little tubes.I wasn't sure if they were meant to be like that.

Nice to see you have some lovely flowers on them now. My seeds didn't germinate this year :o(

Stiki, mine aren't really flowering much - at present at least - they have made loads of growth but few flowers. Near our shed there are some self-sown Cosmos & they are flowering much better than the ones I sowed this year! You can see that if you look at the photos again, especially the ones dated 1st September. Even today they look very much the same.

Steragram, I've no idea if they should be like that, I suspect not. Do they look as if they have been sown/glued together? There are some insects that do this as it serves them as protection for predators. If not then it's probably because of the "summer" we have just had! This variety, I'm growing/blogging about, has fluted petals, that is, they are half curved, which gives them a different look to the usual flat petals of the rest of the Cosmos varieties.

probably my fault as i went on holiday for 10 days just at the wrong time when the seeds were really just germinating.

i gave up and bought a few instead this year!

It's a shame that happened! :-(( Did you know you can sow them several times in a year to get staggered flowering?

no i didnt think of that! should have been more persistent shouldnt i!!

looks as if i have a few seed heads ready for next year though!!!

Your flowers are like the ones on the seed packet I had, Balcony, and a few of my flowers were like that. The others were like little tubes that never unrolled, but it was so consistent that I'd be surprised if it was insect damage.
But the whole batch was miserable, so write it off as one more effect of the "summer"

I don't understand what could have happened to your Cosmos plants, Steragram, I have self-sown seedling blooming from seeds that fell into the ground from last year as well as 2 different varieties, planted at different times, that are doing fine. I've also seen other plants on another allotment I pass every time I enter the allotments field & they also look alright. I pass at least one garden with Cosmos growing in it on my way to town/allotment & they also seem to be normal.

I just hope you have better luck next year.

thank you - it was only some of the Seashells that had the rolled petals.

Strange as it might seem I think I saw one flower on my Cosmos 'Seashells' that reminded me of how you describe yours. It too had rolled up petals but truth to say I didn't go up & have a closer look at the flower in question as I was passing by with a 10lr watering can in each hand!

It may be normal in this variety of Cosmos, I don't know yet. Nevertheless I will keep an eye on the flowers as they open & see if there are any more like it.

Let me know if you see more of them!

It may be the "Trademark" of this particular variety as a few more flowers have opened since I last posted & the petal seem to start off pretty rolled up & open up somewhat as they age. I'll see if I can remember to take a few photos of individual flowers - something I don't often do with smaller flowers.

Those are so pretty :o)

They are pretty when they unroll, but disappointing when they don't.

I plant cosmos each year, an absolute favourite but also fewer flowers this time.

For some reason I don't understand, the Cosmos 'Sensation Mixed' have made very big plants but with few flowers. I don't remember now if I put horse manure in this bed at the time I dug it over - I'll have to have a look back through all my photos from the beginning of making up this plot. I know where the Cosmos 'Seashells Mixed' are growing, about 1/2 way along the plot, I did put in manure but these plants were put out very much later than the others.