Deer will eat flowers like that. My neighbor in PA had an entire row of flowers along her very long driveway completely eaten one night right after they began to bloom. The daylilies were still buds about to open.

I was going to say, in my garden it would be the deer. They will munch off the buds or open flowers on just about any plant they can get to, even those they do not normally browse - poppies, clematis, snapdragons, geraniums, sweet peas, geum, salvia, lilies, hydrangeas, heucheras, roses.

The only flowers they have ignored are lupines and euphorbias.

To the two who suggest deer, I wouldn't think deer would snap off the stem 3 to 6 inches from the ground before taking the flowers from the other end of the severed stem????

In my garden it would be squirrels or chipmunks who sever and dig, to add insult to injury

if you can pull back the mulch.. and finely rake the soil surface.. maybe you can capture some footprints ... ken

I have some deer issues, but I've never seen a deer bite off a stem and then leave that stem after then biting off the flower head from the removed stem, if I am reading your description correctly. So whatever is eating it is leaving the severed, bloomless stem just laying on the ground, correct? That's something I've never seen in my gardening experience. Sorry I can't be of help but I hope you find out what it is!

:)
Dee

I have bunnies this year, 2 generations. Unusual for us, we usually see one - this year I've seen 4 at one time in the garden and a few weeks later, the smaller next generation showing up too. They have taken a liking to my hostas and lilies in particular and they definitely bit the top of the lilies that they could reach and ate the buds before they opened.

I have a critter doing the same to my 2 year asparagus plants, stems are cut off 4" to 6" high and only the very tops of the fern are gone leaving most of it on the ground. Thing is the asparagus is in a deer and rabbit proof fence and no foot tracts are ever found, even after a good rain. Now I have a another plot with strawberries, asparagus and garlic with no fence where deer & rabbits graze at will, but the guilty critter is confirmed with foot tracks, but no tracks in this plot either on the severed ferns. So what is it?

Tracks confirm Deer top off big and small plants but eat the entire thing to the point it stops. Rabbits do the same thing as high as they can reach but leave larger plants alone. I've been watching this topic for the mystery critter not really knowing what It may be.

But now I believe Marie is correct, squirrels. No tracks but they're light, so no smoking gun and only circumstantial evidence, they are now my top suspect. After watched baby squirrels, never the adults, chew off and discard my new oak leaves and then eating just the new stem growth (I think), and after reading the first spring is the hardest on new squirrels looking for food I'm just assuming they are desperate. Never had the problem with baby squirrels because I never had them, a neighbor was killing every one he could for 20 yrs, he stopped and I don't mind them.....I think.

I found squirrels to be very curious and not always interested in eating something. I had new iris plants in pots, sitting in the yard waiting to be planted and they dragged them around the yard and chewed them a little than left them. Grrr! I used to have a lot of squirrels in the yard until I stopped feeding the birds and now I don't see them that much.