teosinte seeds

the seeds on the left in the top photo came from the remnants of northern tepehuan teosinte seed heads that had already shattered on plants in my back yard...the seeds on the right are ones i have collected from the pots containing the indoor teosinte in my basement...the seeds along the top are ones i have purchased from native seeds...obviously the seed heads in the back are shattering more profusely because the plants out there have completely died back while the ones in the basement are going more slowly and will be shattering later...in all three groups there are lighter and darker seeds and when i did a float test the darker seeds in each batch were the ones that sank...moot really since i segregated and planted only dark seeds last spring and the plants produced a wealth of seed heads and i will be planting only the denser dark seeds next march...after some of the other projects become better established i am planning to do some test germination of seed i have collected from this past season's plants and i will be replanting some of those seeds outdoors as well...although surely a multitude of seeds from shattered heads have hit the ground out there to overwinter in the back...it will be interesting to see if the stands of annual teosinte that performed so well this past year re-establish themselves by self-seeding...that would make my day and it would surely find its way into this blog...a self-generating stand of teosinte would leave me geeked for years to come.