What is beheading our primroses?

 


We have ten clumps of wild primrose in our wildflower beds.  This evening
I noticed that every clump had been 'attacked' and dozens and dozens of  
flower heads
neatly removed at the joint between stem and the base of the flower.  The
flowers remain on or near to the clumps.  Two clumps have had every flower
removed.  There is no sign of damage to the petals or any indication of
other injury to the stem.  I assume that it is probably a bird due to the
precision of the 'cut' at the base of the flower head.  I have seen the
usual wood pigeons, blackbirds, dunnocks and finches around the beds today
but no untoward activity.  The adjacent planting of cowslips is untouched.

Grateful for any thoughts.

--
rbel

 


In my young days working in the Parks in Hastings we used to have to
thread the polyanthus (that is putting black cotton thread across the
beds feom twig to twig stuck into the soik to make a web over the
plants).
This was done to stop the sparrows from removing all the flowers, they
would pick the individual flowers from the stems and use them in some
form of display, they could strip a bead in a couple of days, they
always left the flowers behind, they didn't take them away.
David Hill

 

On Tue, 13 Apr 2010 11:03:00 +0200, Dave Hill  


Many thanks for this.  We don't have any sparrows but there has been a  
male greenfinch lurking in the wildflower beds the last couple of days -  
he could be the culprit.  The two resident females just sit on the seed  
feeders and ignore him, so perhaps this has been a forlorn attempt to  
encourage them.  Thinking about it I suppose that alternatively it could  
be feeding on the very base of the flower - it appears from a little  
online research that the ovary is located in this position.  I will have  
to collect some of the removed flowers and look at them under a magnifying  
glass.  As a temporary measure we have covered the primroses.
--
rbel