Germinating Devil's Bit Scabious Seed

[chitin]

My experience is that Devil's bit Scabious needs winter chilling. (Emorsgate seeds supply ). Fresh seed from plants is best sowed straight away even slightly "green" Seed of most Scabious species is short lived and packets from garden centres may be seeds garnered up to 3 years old. I get very few cultivated Scabious seedlings from my packets but have not tried autumn sowing. Am trying Field Scabious and Small Scabious ( Emorsgate) which I sowed in autumn and got plenty of plants up. For flowers as although listed for Marsh Frits some say not accepted. It's a superb plant for mid Summer flowers when there is not much about except Ragwort to feed Butterflies in breeding cages.