flowers to seed

Cosmos has finally all died off- from hard frosts this week. It was nice while it lasted.

I collected quite a bit of seed, and scattered more in the backyard bed.

I know they're viable, because quite a few seedlings came up on their own in the pot:

I did not get any from the pink-flowering plants though (which I like better). I thought I had just missed all the seeds when the flowers faded, but went out to look close one day and found that the plants were dying. Riddled with tiny little leaf bugs of some kind. Disappointing in loosing that.

Interestingly, I noticed that the leaf shape is different on the yellow-flowering cosmos and the pink ones. I sorted them by leaf shape when they were seedlings, just because I thought the plants with fuller leaves would look nicer on my deck. I planted all the ferny-looking ones with deeper notched lobes in the back bed. All the ones on the deck flowered orange and yellow, the ones in the back flowered pink.

So now I know if I grow from a mixed packet again, I can sort the seedlings by flower color from the leaf shape.