bob prohaska wrote:
[in regards to collecting roadside common vetch seeds]

Collecting fully-ripe seeds is difficult. The county mows road
shoulders at irregular intervals, making the plants hard to find
at all and scattering what seeds might be present.

I've tried grabbing a few whole plants at random times, hoping to
find a few mature pods, but it seems that if visible flowers are
present essentially no pods are filled out. Once bloom ceases the
plants are surprisingly hard to find among the other weeds.


It turns out a few pods will ripen after a plant is pulled. Keeping
the stems wet might help a little, but it didn't help very much.

In the end several large clumps of vetch were pulled up and placed
in a bag to dry slowly. A small fraction of pods, presumably the
oldest, filled out and released seeds. I'll try to start a few now,
to check viability, and save the rest to plant in the spring.

Thanks for everybody's attention,

bob prohaska