Are these pansy seeds

sueporter312002

I've been dead heading my pansies & most have a pod in the middle (see photo) if I open them, there is white seeds inside, but I also noticed that some have dried out & opened up to brown dry seeds. Which are the ones I'm supposed to sow please. I've added photos of each. Thanks

Pete.8

The brown ones are the ripe ones - good luck with them

sueporter312002

Thanks Pete, so as I'm a total novice am I to assume I can sow the brown ones but not the white ones, also once I've picked the old bud off will it ripen & open on it's own or have I just sabotaged any chance of the white seeds from growing. I don't know whether to leave cut off buds to open on their own or split them & scoop out & store the white ones. Sorry that was a bit long winded 😁

BobTheGardener

In general, you need to leave the seed pods on plants until they start going dry and brown by themselves, at which point you can collect them.

strelitzia32

Really simple way to look at it: a plant wants to propagate itself, it does that by seeds, and flowers are the intermediate state before that.

If you take undeveloped seed pods off the plant, it can't propagate itself so you get more flowers as it tries to create more seeds. That's why you dead head - because the seeds aren't mature. 

If you wait until the seeds mature, they are ready to sprout so you can take them off the plant and sow them yourself (or leave them and the plant will self sow).

To answer your question, the white seeds are immature and if you've taken them off the plant, they won't mature into viable seeds, so just throw them. You will however get more flowers!

The brown seeds are mature and you can sow them. The seed pod in your photo (the one that looks like a horror show open alien mouth!) Is full of mature seeds for you to sow.

sueporter312002

That's great thank you, I'll bin the un-open pods then 🙂