collecting teosinte seed

a quick post to point out something i discovered that is new to me ( no surprise that i am still learning things...i am better informed today than yesterday ) ...until now i had been harvesting seed from ears that had opened or were in the process of opening like the one in the top photo...these are finite in number out there and since i wanted to "naturalize" some seed to see if it would auto-germinate into another generation i turned to unopened ears to augment my seed stock...i began opening them this morning and was surprised to find a much higher proportion of dark seeds in the unopened ears...to my untrained ( or, perhaps, semi-trained autodidact ) eye this indicates a higher concentration of endosperm which means more viable seed come germination time...i have segregated the two batches of seed and when i begin germination tests in late march ( i will be putting any successful plants out in the yard so i will wait until i would normally plant seed outdoors [ which is on the agenda as well ] to germinate any with the hydrogen peroxide soak method ) it will be interesting to see which has the higher germination rate...still completely geeked by this plant...there may be a popping attempt soon as well...off to the community garden to mulch garlic...more on that later today...as a side note, i blame google for the doubled image here...i did not upload it twice today...it was me the last time...i decline responsibility today.