Seed collecting: a quick guide
One simple way to get more native plants on your land is to collect and sow wild seeds. Here are some tips if you're just getting started.
The other day a friend texted me a photo of a grass to ask if I could confirm what it was (this btw is one of my fav kind of texts to receive hehe). I was really excited to see what he sent over because, as he suspected, this turned out to be a relatively uncommon grass to find around here. This led to a very fruitful site visit and seed collection outing! Fall (and even winter) is a great time to collect native wild seed for planting and propagating.
I love getting plant ID questions as much as I love collecting wild seed. This reminds me of some advice I gave to a landowner years ago. She had just bought property and was excited to explore the wild landscape she was now caretaker of. She was eager to get to know the flora and fauna and learn best practices to support native biodiversity. (In fact, she even wrote a book about her experience. You should check out her fantastic book and newsletter here: Bad Naturalist, by Paula Whyman. )
Paula was full of curiosity and one of the first questions she asked me was: “what is an easy and direct way to get more native plants onto the landscape?”
My advice to her was this: First, get to know the species already on your land. And then, as you discover native species, you can collect seeds from those plants and save them for your future planting projects or simply sow them right away in your garden beds or other areas of your property as you remove unwanted plants.
Collecting seed can be a good practice for beginners who are just starting to get to know their land. It not only helps you practice plant ID and observe plants around you more closely, but it also helps to spread those valuable native plants. And bonus is that it doesn’t cost any money (just time, if you have it)! So I thought it might be nice to put a little post together to share some key tips if you want to get started with seed collecting yourself.
General Guidelines for Seed Collecting
So seed collecting and propagation can get as technical and specific as you can imagine. Some seeds cannot be stored and should be sown right away, others need cold stratification or scarification (to be scratched up) in order to germinate. All the ins and outs and fine details can be intimidating to those who are just getting started. So my goal here is to simplify and share some top insights for you to get started. Then you can take the journey as far as you want as you get to know the species you want to collect and their specific needs.
First, do no harm. Be sure that collecting seed doesn’t harm the population you are collecting from. The goal here is to promote and support wild native species, not harm or reduce. So make sure to prioritize collections from large populations and species that are not rare or uncommon. There are a lot of important guidelines and considerations for rare species and if you are curious to learn more I recommend checking out: Center for Plant Conservation. Collecting seed from rare plants can actually harm the population if not done correctly and so it’s better to contact conservation organizations if you do find rare plant populations to learn how to protect and conserve them.
A general guideline is to collect no more than 10% of seed from a given population, although there is some nuance because if you collect from the same population year after year this number might even be too high. So use your best judgement and leave 90-95% in place so you don’t harm the population.
Collect a little seed from multiple plants. This helps promote and preserve genetic diversity.
While timing for collection varies by species, my quickguide simplified advice is to collect when the seeds look like they are ready to (or already are) release or detach from the plants naturally. If they are easy to pull off the plant it’s likely a good time.
Be sure you properly identify the species. You can text me photos (jk 😉 ) to confirm ID. Actually, iNaturalist has an app that can be a helpful place to narrow in on an ID. I recommend starting there but not ending there (they are not always accurate and don’t help you understand what features are important to help you ID and get to know the plant yourself too). You should confirm with a proper key. See some of my fav apps like Flora of VA or Flora of Southeast etc. to help with that. I share more about those apps in my previous post:
Ok so here is my cheat for simplifying the sowing/storing process. If you don’t want to worry about whether or not the seed you collected is recalcitrant (meaning it cannot be stored) like acorns, you could just go ahead and sow everything you collect right away. Sowing seeds in the autumn, even into early winter, can also help with cold stratification of seeds that need it (like milkweeds). So collecting and sowing right away is a nice easy practice for beginners. If you need to temporarily store for a few days, keep them in a paper bag to ensure adequate airflow and prevent mold, and you can store in fridge or just a cool dry place out of direct sunlight. Long-term storage is another ballgame which I wont get into here.
And I want to insert something here. Sometimes the goal is planning, process, strategy, an aim for perfection. But it doesn’t always have to be! The goal most often is not to create perfection, it’s simply to create. To create small everyday wins that fit into our busy lives. Sometimes I plan a garden bed but honestly most often I wing it! I sow seeds on the fly just to make things happen and fit it in little by little. I say this because I want to inspire you to just get started even in a small way with one plant in a teeny patch in your backyard and see what happens!
And look….you can even do it wearing Crocs 🤪! This is a little video I shot earlier this fall that represents just what I’m talking about — little wins! I call it opportunistic seeding!
Be sure to label your seed with collection date, species name and location. You may think you will remember what everything is, but believe me, you won’t.
Lastly, I am sure some of you would like a deeper dive into seed collecting. Here is a great resource from the Xerces Society that goes into more detail: Collecting and Using your Own Wildflower Seed
Some Common Native Plants To Get Started
It’s one thing to be able to recognize a plant when it is flowering, but it can sometimes be trickier to ID when it has already gone to seed. I recommend visiting the population you want to collect from in multiple seasons and stages of phenology to confirm ID. But here are some pics of seedheads of some common native plants that grow abundantly in our region. This is a nice list to get started for your seed collecting.
Full Sun/Open, Average to Dry Habitats
Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Milkweeds typically require cold stratification (cold temperatures) before germination. So I recommend you sow right away or you can follow steps for refrigerator stratification. With milkweed, I like to sow it in pots after collection and just leave outside on my porch all winter and have had great success with that.
Purpletop (Tridens flavus),
Fun fact about purpletop. Its common name refers to its purple seedheads that put on a nice display in late summer. But most people don’t know that its species name “flavus” means yellow because its mature seeds actually take on a tan to yellow straw color. And that is the color they will be when they are ready for collecting!
Broomsedge (Andropogon virginicus) & Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
I talked more about these species in my last post and even how to tell these lookalikes apart. Watch my video here to learn how to tell them apart and read my last post for more info on each species:
Full Sun, Moist to Wet Habitats
Seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia)
This plant loves to grow in wet meadows and along pond margins. I love the cute little seed “boxes” (filled with teeny tiny seeds) and as it’s an easy one to ID because of the charismatic seed heads I wanted to share it here.
NY Ironweed (Ludwigia alternifolia)
This grows abundantly in wet and moist meadows. In the future I plan to show you how to tell it apart from other ironweed species.
Part to Full Shade, Dry Woodland Edges
Bottlebrush Grass (Elymus hystrix)
The charismatic seedheads of this species of native ryegrasses are easy to spot and ID. Easy to collect too!
Bluestem Goldenrod (Ludwigia alternifolia)
There are so many goldenrod species (over 30 in Virginia alone) and they can be tricky to ID. Bluestem is one of the easier to identify with the flowers growing up the stem in the axils of the leaves.
That’s all for today’s newsletter!
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Take good care,
Charlotte