plenty of phalaris heads but zero seed ????

[finchbreeder]

Live food instead of green food?
LML

[GregH]

Just reading about the genus Phalaris. It seems that the spiklets consist of 3 florets - a fertile teminal flower subtended by 2 sterile ones and the fertile seed is dropped as soon as it matures. This means at best 2/3 of all the seeds that you see on the heads are empty and if you leave it until "mature" then you'll be left with no seed. There are exceptions to this rule cannary seed, (P. canariansis) retains the seed when mature and so can be harvested. Apparently the mutation required is recessive and must be present on 4 different loci so it's not an easy trait to breed in but it has been put into P. aquatica in an variety called "Australian" as reported in the paper by Oram 2004.