Anybody Need Any Hollyhock Seeds?

So It seems that the Hollyhocks are coming to the end of their time in our garden. They have provided much enjoyment from their initial state as shown here where I honestly had no idea what they were

After the rather ugly but interesting phase, i.e. the definition of cute ;-), they finally bloomed as shown below. The started from the bottom of the stalks and as the stalks grew, some of them up to three metres tall, the blooms work their way up upwards. While heading north the lower flowers die, fold themselves up neatly and drop off, so the overall effect is the flowers appear to be slowly moving to the top of the stalk. Below is a picture of the blooms in progress.



The flowers gradually curl up neatly before dropping off finally leaving a lone flower holding on at the top for dear life! Almost across the board the last flower standing is the flower at the top of the stalk. No idea if they win a prize and certainly hope that they are not scared of heights! Something this size hanging on for dear life up to 3 metres in the air? Thats the equivalent of us hanging on at the top of a 30 story building I reckon! Below is that last brave soul on the hollyhock near our front door. You can see the seed pods that are left behind when the flowers below have fallen off.



So each flower, if polinated by your average friendly bumble bee as seen below, gradually falls off leaving behind a seed pod.



Given each Hollyhoch has about 30 flowers on it, this results in about 30 seed pods assuming that the bees have done their work! When these dry out, unless you want quite a few more hollyhocks next year in your garden, its a good idea to get rid of them! This is as each seed pod has probably up to about 20 seeds in it. Yesterday evening I went around the plants and trimmed all the dried seed pods off my Hollyhocks. I would say I removed about a 1/4 of the seed pods, as seen below.



So I think I have about 20 hollyhocks growing in my garden with apprximatly 30 flowers on each. Assuming that all the seed pods have been polinatied, most have but there is the odd one that hasn't, this means I removed about (20 plants by 30 flowers by 0.25 as I only removed a quater by 20 seeds in each pod) 3000 seeds yesterday evening! Guess this is about what 3000 seeds looks like?



Actually it's probably less as I threw a substainial amount of seeds out as well. Still there are still a few to go around. Does anybody want any of these? I am happy to share ;-). If you miss out on these ones there are still many more available on the plants still! I shall nab those as well if needed (unlikely ;-) ) when they are fully dried out!

According to the internet, and its unlimited wealth of mostly factual information, after your hollyhocks have finished you should cut back the stems only a few inches above the ground. If the hollyhocks have another year left in them they will be back next year. Apparently they are Biennial however sometimes, because they are so hard ;-), they come back for a few more years than 2 ;-).

Cheers

m