yes Rhizo_1! just what I was thinking about having them in a no ugly plant allowed area! I wouldnt care except those pots are right on the front deck where everyone see's them and I have other types of plants that could go there. Tiger's Eye I have not grown before so I dont know if the seeds will come true. I hope at least some will come back next year! I have also noticed that certain colors of pansies came back this year? Like last year I had all sorts of colors but now I have mostly the basic colors(maybe not as new varieties?) such as white, yellow, red with yellow, the big flowered varieties which are the same as last year, and also like 1 purple. I had those colors last year plus some ones with a little variant to them such as white with purple in the center, that didnt come this year. The pansies do make it through the winter, and sometimes keep flowering, but by summer if I dont cut them back then they are all scraggly. Which I dont care anyway since by summer I'm ready for more thriving summer flowers instead of trying to keep cold-weather flowers alive.

Your pods are fine. As they dry they will get lighter and eventually start to crack open. If you don't want the seeds to fall out you can wrap the pod in a fine mesh, or keep checking them and harvest just as they start to open. The seeds will be smooth and pale brown at first but will dry dark and wrinkly like the ones in your picture. As long as they have some thickness to them I think they can sprout - nothing ventured... Plant them 1 inch deep in pots and leave outside all winter, they should sprout in early spring. I have had some luck with pods which were broken off before they had a chance to mature, so don't worry. Chad

photo? Not sure what you are referring to as a seed pod. These trees make hanging inflorescences, which eventually develop into a huge number of red fruits, which have a single seed inside each one nearly as large as the fruit (entire fruit is a little smaller than your typical marble). If you peel away the thin soft layer of fruit, you will find what is the seed pod inside (a small, spherical brown nut) and inside that is the seed. These pods do NOT open on their own- they germinate from within the pods (or sometimes in an animal's gut). Usually there are many many hundreds of fruits per inflorescence. So not sure what you are referring to when you say you see two seed pods.....?

I'm in south puget sound area the pacific northwest (US). We had a particulary bad bout of spider mites and powdery mildew late this summer. Pretty frustrating. Anyways, I still have poppies blooming. I started some in april and a second planting in june. Some of the june ones bloomed by august; others are just starting. Late summer was unusually dry here. Then we started getting our usualy cool, grey and wet weather in late september. A couple of my pods which were just about ready to harvest for seed started turning green again so I pulled them and viola! all the seeds were fully germinated! Darn!! My first Hen and Chicks plant bloomed in early september. I only got two flowers from a single plant, so I really didn't want to mess up the only seeds. I brought this plant, which was in a pot, onto my enclosed back porch. Unfortunately, the plants aren't getting enough light for the younger pods to develop. I have no supplemental light source, so I had to choose to keep the HnC pods dry. Does anyone have any hints on how to deal with late season poppies in the pac northwest?