I collected them but forgot to label them: why do these ‘seeds’ look like this?
The curled, ridged pieces in the photograph do not look much like ordinary seeds from an outdoor plant. The key distinction is between the seeds themselves and what contained them.
What you collected looks like remains of seed heads rather than a pile of individual seeds. The shape is distinctive: dark, tightly curled, ridged pieces, with many tiny dark grains visible between them. Those small grains are more likely to be the actual seeds.
The photograph fits poppy best: its seeds come from a dry capsule and can easily become mixed with broken capsule fragments when it is emptied. If you collected them from an outdoor plant without labelling them, you may therefore have both seeds and capsule remains in the same pile.
Separating them now in October
Gently blow or sieve away the larger curled pieces and keep the tiny dark seeds. To test them, sow a few thinly in a pot or outdoors where they can experience winter cold; poppies often germinate well after a cold winter. Keep them dry and dark if you prefer to wait until spring.
Sources and images 1
- Original reader contribution ↗Reader question