What's going on with my onions?

[stickinthemud]

Back in June I planted some supermarket onions that had sprouted. One sent up two scapes which bloomed into pretty spheres of tiny white flowers. Those have withered but so far I don't see seeds. A friend told me onion seeds are tiny and black but I only see flaky white flower parts when I have pulled a couple apart. I never saw bees at the flowers, so were they not pollinated? What should I look for?

[WisJim]

Onions take lots of pollination, in my experience, usually by small flies or wasps or tiny bees. You may not have had enough pollination to get many seeds.

[ronbre]

may still be too early

[Paquebot]

Each flower should have produced up to a dozen black seeds. They would first be in a tiny ball with a thin papery skin holding them in. Eventually they split open and the seeds are dispersed. It's possible that all of the seeds are spread all around on the ground. If so, you'll probably see a small "lawn" in another month or so.

Martin

[stickinthemud]

Thanks, everyone. I suspect pollenation is the problem. I saw no bees, flies, anything on the flowers. A few of the last flowers formed triangular green swellings. I pulled one apart that seemed to be rotting & it had tiny (1 mm or less) white blobs that might have been embryo seeds. I will let the rest of the flowers (including two or three green things) dry in an envelope and see what happens.

[Paquebot]

There's also the chance that they just weren't mature yet. My bottle onions were planted in April and they still haven't gotten past the "green swelling" stage. Onion flowers bloom over a long period of time so there are both green capsules and open flowers in the same cluster. No problem with germination as every native bee and wasp within miles has found the 100+ plants.

Martin