Thanks for the advice on the number of pods to let ripen on any one plant. As you can see from the photos I'm guilty of letting multiple pods mature. I will remove a few to see how this affects the ripening of the remainder...
What are people's views on pods that are "open pollenated" (OP), by which I mean pollenated by something not of the same exact species. I have, for example, good OP seeds from L. pardalinum this year, but my group of pardalinum are, to the best of my understanding, propagated clones and so should all be self-sterile. I had other Western American hybrids flowering roughly 40 feet away and I am assuming that it is pollen from these that made its way to the pardalinum. But I also had other species - e.g. davidii - flowering immediately next to them. The same is true for my "OP" henryii var. citrinum, though my other henryi hybrids were flowering maybe 20 feet away.
So my question is when you get good OP seed on a group that should be self-sterile is it more likely that the pollenator is a closely-related species even if some distance away, or the nearest neighbor even if it is genetically more distant? Are these OP seeds possibly attractive to germinate and grow on because of the possible unknown and odd parentage? I ask, as to go back to Rick's suggestion of culling pods, it is these OP pods that I might cull first rather than reducing the number of pods from protected crosses. But maybe this conundrum will make me keep all the existing pods and I'll endeavor to be more disciplined next year!
