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Attracting Goldfinches

What on earth have goldfinches, siskins and niger seed got to do with gardens on wet soil? One link will be obvious to garden bird lovers because the small black oil-rich seed known as niger is compellingly attractive to these brightly coloured finches. The other link is that niger is grown as an edible oil seed crop in its native Ethiopia, and elsewhere, often on poor and wet soils.

Because it is small some niger seed will invariably spill from bird feeders. It is relatively soil tolerant but germinates and grows especially well in summer on damp or wet soils in Britain. Though flowering late and killed by the first frost, there are worries that it could become a more widespread alien introduction in warm regions. Consequently much of the seed is killed by heat treatment before marketing.

Niger or nyjer, Guizotia abyssinica, is a frost-tender, quick-growing, annual that can easily reach 2m on a warm moist soil, producing an abundance of golden yellow flowers in the shorter days of late summer. So if you have a moist garden and enjoy the thought of goldfinches at your bird feeder, be prepared to also to find some of these fragile summer herbs.

To learn more about plants that flourish in wet areas, check out John Simmons' Managing the Wet Garden.