Are my Coneflower seeds viable?

I collected some seed heads off purple coneflower and let them dry for a week or two. Is it okay that the seeds are very light colored or does this mean I collected them too early?

My coneflower seeds are light colored, beige to blonde colored. The fat ones should be viable. See if yours looks like these....
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/showimage/82/

Thank you so much! They do look like the ones in the picture, so they should be fine. I think I saw that pic but I guess I thought it was possible they didn't know if they were ripe enough either.

i am currently separating the seeds now... some are not quite as 'fat' as others. Are the flatter ones not viable, or should i save those too?

so far, i'm only saving the fat ones, like the ones in the link posted above.

TIA<

Terese

Maybe a picture would help, can you post one?

LOL Meredith.... it's all in the trash.

BUT -- jsut before it started pouring out, i can out with a qt jar and grabbed a bunch more heads... i have not separated them yet... when i do, i'll take a photo of the flatter seeds too .... but I'm thinking they are under-developed seeds [hence, not viable]

I'm having a hard time remembering if I had any flat ones like your describing and I thought a picture might help my memory. : ) My coneflower seeds are still green on the plants right now.

Mine are still flowering. My seed isn't usually cooked til end of Nov/Dec. but then with all the weird and terrible weather this year yours could be cooked tcs.

it wasn't easy to photograph ... but here is have a "fat" one [viable] and a flatter one ... that i think is a dud.

hope this helps.

but -- also the way i see it... even if i toss the flatter seeds, i still have A LOT of seeds.
These are the common purple coneflower.

Looks good to me. I do that too. If I have lots of seeds I keep the gooders and give away/turf the rest.

dahlia -- so do ya thing even the flatter seeds are good?

The one on the right looks like it might be good too, to be sure I'd have to touch it. If it feels hard and like it's got some substance I'd think it's fine. Lol - it's so hard to explain these things on a keyboard : )

I'd definitely go with the plump ones. LOL Meredith79 no kiddin, don't even talk to me about colour describing.

I agree, but if you want more for yourself I'd throw any of the unsure ones right in the garden where you want more and see what you get out of them. : )

thanks... sounds good.

Remedial seed collecting for cone flowers.
Do I wait until the head is black and pick the head?
I picked one head and got lots of shaft stuff but didn't see anything like what you are showing?
First year with seeds, and I really want to do this.
Thanks for your help.

They are very prickly to get the seeds out of. And all that black chafe stuff goes everywhere, but the seeds are hard and beige. I had a lot of 'ouches' because they are so prickly. If there aren't any seeds it could be due to birds eating them before you got to them - I would check some more to see if you fare better. : )

I found something that looks like the seeds, but it's attached to the base of the petals, rather than in the cone part. Is that where they are?

Mine were in the cone part. To get them out I had to rip them apart. I'm not sure if there are other types that are different.

Thanks Meredith. I found them! I didn't pick it until the head and top of the stem had turned brown/black. Strange that the seeds still didn't seem ready to fall out on their own. Now I have the same question as you - wonder if they're ripe if I had to pull apart the cone to get them.

I was wondering the same thing but I had very good germination in a ghetto greenhouse. And mine had to be ripped apart and picked through. It's quite a chore to clean these. Maybe if we let them dry longer before cleaning, but I had the piggy swap in November I wanted to send them to.

Forgot to say Scissors work too!

That's good to know.

Geez, you're brutal with those poor heads

Hey thanks Cord for that link!!! I was just ready to throw out the light colored ones and just save the dark straight ones. I looked at the link just in time! I could have thrown out the seeds and wondered why what I had saved didn't grow flowers! :~)