Collecting Seed of Local Native Plants

There are some important things to know before you begin collecting the seeds of local native plants you may wish to grow in your backyard (when I say backyard I am also including the sides and front as well). Here are some tips:

1. First and foremost get the permission of the landowner. Public lands, such as National Wildlife Refuges, do not permit collection of plants, seeds, etc. without a permit. Getting this material is not worth the trouble it may bring you if you trespass to do it.
2. You should collect seeds of plants from sites that are similar to those in your yard. Is it in a wetland or area that stays wet? If so, you don’t want to collect and plant the seeds in a dry portion of your yard. It likely will not survive and you may get disappointed.
3. Do not collect all of the seeds from a plant. It is important to leave some for natural re-population of that plant species in the area. If there is only one plant, take a small proportion of the seeds and leave the rest. You can usually find the same plant species in several areas and will be able to collect enough seed for your purposes. If there are several individuals at a location and you plan to plant more than one in your yard, collect seeds from a number of individuals. When they mature and pollinate one another the resulting seed will have more genetic diversity than if you planted seeds from only one individual. The genetic diversity will help you have healthier plants if you grow them from these seeds or if you let them naturally drop seed and grow.
4. Seeds from some types of plants must be exposed to the weather or other environmental factors in order to germinate. For instance, cold may be needed to crack open the outer shell and allow the seedling to grow. It is always best to try to plant the seed when you collect it or shortly thereafter.

Of course, the seeds of plants are always contained in their fruits. Fruits come in a variety of forms and I don’t want to get into the technical aspects of their names and structure. The fruits can be similar to apples and oranges in which many seeds are contained within a large fleshy structure. They can be a nut with only one seed. The fruits can be a small structure that appears to be only a seed. In any case, if you are not sure which is the seed, plant the entire fruit. In the case of some plants, such as some asters, the seed is extremely small. Just take a mature flower head and shake or crumble it in the spot where you want the plant to grow. This will release some of the seeds.

The plant family Asteraceae has many members and the common name is typically “asters.” This family is also believed to be the most advanced. What looks like the single flower is actually a structure called the inflorescence that is made up of a large number of flowers of two types. The disk flowers are the structures that make up the center portion of the inflorescence. The ray flowers are the structures that radiate out from the center and appear to be petals. Each part of the disk and each individual “petal” is actually a separate flower and may have all of the parts to form seed. Typically, the disk flowers or those in the center produce the seed. The rays usually lack all of the parts necessary to form seed. Thus, you need to be careful not to discard the portion that contains the seed. Again, plant the entire “flower” (that is, the inflorescence) if you are not sure which contains the seed. As an aside, butterflies, bees, and other invertebrates that feed on asters will do so on the flowers that form the seed because these will be the only ones that typically produce nectar. Since this is usually the disk flowers, you will wish to pick flowers with large disks, rather than a similar variety with small disks, since the larger disks will have more flowers that produce nectar. This is true of domesticated flowers in the aster family (for example, zinnia, black-eyed susan, blanket flower, coneflower, fleabane, sunflower, coreopsis, and daisy).