>> Generally speaking, when the seeds are mature and ready to harvest, the flower looks dead. It'll be brown and dry,
I agree with that, for other flowers I've tried to collect seed from.
However, I don't recall my Salvia ever reaching the "brown and dry" state during the summer . First there were colorful blooms, maybe I saw them starting to fade, briefly, then they were replaced by younger blooms. I think i did see some brown blooms in late fall and that's where i got the few seeds I did get ...
Maybe I'm mis-remembering what the Salvia did during the summer, or didn;'t watch closely enough, or maybe the whole bloom fell off as soon as it died.
They seemed to be in bloom all summer.
