The colours that the pod may show seem to depend on the pod parent. I don't have any photos but if there are some dry spells tomorrow (the forecast is for rain) then I will take some photos and post them.
If the pod is misshapen it usually means that one or more of the chambers does not have developing seeds in it and those chambers are dying and then drying. The pod may crack open at the tip of those chambers - that usually does not necessarily mean that the seeds in the chambers that did not dry are mature. The time to collect the seeds is when the other chambers actually start to crack open at their tips.
In a normal daylily all seeds in a pod start as soft whitish ovules, but as they develop they produce a darker pigment in their outer layer. The colour is brownish and then later becomes black.
If you open a developing seed pod very early, say less than two weeks after pollination the seeds will be whitish. Around days 19 to 20 they become brownish and a few days after that they become black (lets say that is about 25 days after pollination). A pod takes about 52 days to develop to maturity (ranges from 46 to 56 days according to The New Daylily Handbook). A daylily seed will be black from about day 25 to day 52. Arisumi (at Beltsville, Maryland) found that after day 35 the seeds could be harvested and planted in soil or grown on special medium. He did not get a high percentage of seedlings (23% in soil and 22% on the special medium) but that may have been partly due to the seedlings being triploids not diploids).
