Due to its eye-catching inflorescences, the steppe candle (Eremurus) is an integral part of perennial beds in more and more gardens. The generally hardy plant can be propagated in various ways.
How to propagate the steppe candle?
The steppe candle can be propagated by sowing, dividing the rhizome or growing wild. For successful propagation, offer the plant optimal location conditions such as plenty of sunlight, permeable soil and no waterlogging.
Let the plant itself run wild
The steppe candle is one of the plant species that tend to go wild after being planted in a suitable location. This means that the plant can not only sow itself via the capsule-shaped seeds (as long as they are allowed to ripen on the wilting inflorescences), but can also reproduce through a clump-like spread of the rhizomes in the soil. Within just a few years, extensive populations with a large number of inflorescences up to 2 meters high (in the case of the giant steppe candle) can develop.
Sowing the Eremurus species
The different types of steppe candles can generally also be propagated by sowing. However, the following characteristics make sowing only a secondary method of propagation:
- long germination time
- high maintenance effort
- long time until the first flowering
As cold germinators, the seeds must be sown directly outdoors or in outdoor plant pots before winter. With this type of plant there are often “latecomers” that only germinate after two or three years. This increases the risk that they will be displaced by other plants in the meantime or accidentally removed. Some Eremurus species can take around 5 to 7 years from sowing to first flowering.
Propagate the steppe candle by dividing the rhizome
If the steppe candle spreads too much in the perennial bed, you can carefully dig up the offshoots that have arisen in early autumn and immediately replant them in another place. You can also divide larger rhizomes with a spade at the same time and replant them. However, be careful not to divide the individual root tubers into more than two or three parts, otherwise they could be too small and weak for flowering the following year.
Tip
For all propagation methods, care should be taken to provide the steppe candles with the best possible location conditions with plenty of sunlight and a permeable soil substrate without waterlogging.