Not as pretty as the flowers but satisfyingly easy to harvest. Since no pod pix were in PF I added some:
Calycanthus floridus Pods are ripe
Seeds are numerous and spill out freely:
My pods seem to be a little more elongated, and never open at all. Perhaps because of my northerly climate.
An interesting (to me) anecdote:
One fall I was showing my older sister around my yard, and of course she noticed the "weird" looking pods on the shrub. I plucked one off and poured out the seeds in here hand. Without even telling her what the shrub was called, she remarked about the seeds, "smells like alspice!".
But we all know that Carolina Alspice (Calycanthus floridulus) is NOT where the spice comes from, and in fact Calycanthus seeds contain one or more toxic alkaloids.
I'll have to take another sniff...I never noticed that!
I sniffed it but either they are too dried out now or the scent is very subtle...or my sniffer is suboptimal! I did notice a slight scent of allspice.
It was way later in the year when she came. But I sniffed the same seeds, and I couldn't smell anything either. Then she sniffed again, and said the smell was much more faint than when I first poured them in her hand.
My nose is definitely different than most people's. I can't smell some things that most can, but then I do smell things that most can't.
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