Do You Have to Reseed Bluebonnets Each Year or Will They Come Back Up?

Life Cycle

• Bluebonnets are considered a winter annual plant. Winter annuals complete their full life cycle in a single year, culminating in the fall or winter. In a single year, they germinate, grow, develop flowers, produce seed and die. Perennial plants, on the other hand, regrow year after year. As an annual, if you start a bluebonnet from seed, you can expect that plant to last one year. It will, however, produce abundant seeds -- and as a natural prairie plant, will reproduce without any help from you.

Self-Seeding

• A few weeks after bluebonnet flowers fade and seed pods take their place, those seed pods burst open, scattering the ground around the parent plant with seeds. As in nature, some of these seeds will germinate and give you new plants next year -- although, when you allow your plants to go to seed naturally, you also run the risk of losing many of the seeds to hungry birds and other wildlife. To avoid this problem, many gardeners collect and store the seeds for planting in the fall.

Seed Germination

• Bluebell seed germination can be complicated. In their natural environment, the prairie, infrequent rainfall threatens the survival of young plants during drought years. Since bluebells are annuals, they cannot count on hardier mature plants to get them through the occasional tough year. Instead, bluebell seeds delay germination, often for years. Only about 20 percent of the seeds that your bluebells produce will germinate in the fall. The rest will remain dormant until later seasons. If a dry year results in the loss of many seedlings, the majority of the seed crop awaits another year and better conditions.

  You can get a hardy crop of bluebonnets from self-sowed seed; it just takes time and patience to allow the population of seeds in the soil to build. You will likely need to plant seeds for several years to ensure good growth from self-sown seeds.

Planting Bluebonnets

• When you buy a packet of bluebonnet seeds, those seeds have been specially treated to increase the germination rate. A method called acid scarification softens the seed coating and removes growth inhibitors. Treated seeds will germinate in as few as 10 days after planting.

  When starting your bluebell patch, you'll likely want to use treated seed to guarantee a good germination rate. You can also start bluebonnets from transplants. Plant bluebonnet seeds and transplants in the fall, as their root systems mature over the winter to give you a colorful display in the spring.