Part 3 - Planting The Seeds

Collecting seeds from local vegetation can be very detrimental to the area involved. There are certain guidelines that need to be followed.

- Always obtain permission from the landowner before collecting the seeds. Seed collection is often prohibited in national and provincial parks, National Wildlife areas, nature reserves, and nature sanctuaries.

- Do not take all the seed from one stand of plants. A good rule to follow is that you take no more than 50 % per plant, collecting no more than 10% of the needed seed stock per area. This has problems in that you do not know how many people have collected seed there before you, so the impacts hare hard to regulate.

- Do not collect from vulnerable, threated, or endangered species unless specifically told by a professional biologist or ecologist that it will not harm that particular plant community. Ontario's Endangered Species Act makes it illegal to collect the seeds of certain endangered plants.

- Share information with other seed collectors. If everybody knows who is picking where, no area will get over-stressed.

- Avoid only selecting from the best looking plants. Genetic diversity will be lost, as some important traits may not be the most aesthetic. Also, collect from areas with varying soil and moisture conditions to allow for good plant diversity.

It is a good idea to collect in different years to augment an already established site. This helps to ensure a healthy genetic diversity of the individuals of the plant community. Another consideration that needs to be addressed when thinking about collecting seeds is that many species look very different in seed than what they look like when they are in bloom. If recognising the desired plants in seed to difficult, try tying coloured yarn around the plants when they are in bloom so they are easily identifiable later in the season.

Most seed is ready to collect 6 to 8 weeks after the plant has begun blooming. Seeds are ripe and ready for collection when the seed is dry, falls readily away from the plant, and has a hard, brown, grey, or tan colour. Squeezing the seed between your fingernails is a good way to test for hardness. If the plant has seed pods, they are ripe when the pods begin to split open and the seeds within will shake out or are otherwise easily removed.