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The early summer drought of 1998 killed most of our fruits and many of those that survived never fully matured - the former were brown and hard; the latter remained greenish. Although the berries begin to dry into 'raisins' already in January, I have had decent results from seeds collected well into late February. Some older berries fall to the ground; others may remain on the tree until the next winter.
 November berries (with previous year's berries). |
Ripe December berries. |
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My advice is to collect fully ripe berries from a nearby madrone during November and December, while the fruit is still juicy.
The berry and seeds are described very differently in different sources. Cheatham and Johnston (1995) say "each fruit has serveral tiny seeds"; Nokes (1986), describes the berries as containing 1 to 10 seeds; Correl and Johnston (1970) don't mention the seeds. You will need to look for yourselves!
A berry and its contents is shown below. Under the juicy outer fruit pulp (lower right) is a round pale yellow casing, pyrene (or nutlet; shown mid right) which contains five compartments (from the 5-celled ovary of the flower). The seeds (lower left) are contained within these compartments (crushed open in the middle). They are not tiny, most in the 2-3 mm. range. (Note: The tiny pale specks visible in the pulp are not seeds!) The seeds vary in darkness, perhaps darkening with age, but are usually darker than the shell-like pyrene segments. (If seeds are collected earlier in the season, the coloring will probably be quite different.)
Most berries contain fewer than 5 seeds; some, none at all. I have not noted more than one seed per cell of the pyrene (thus a maximum of 5).
At first I tediously extracted all and only the seeds for planting - a waste of time. These days I first remove the outer fruity pulp. Then, holding the pyrene in a cup of water, I gently crush it with my fingers, freeing up the seeds (much as in the middle of the photo). Then I soak and rinse the whole mess in rain water in order to remove any remaining fruit juice. From the final rinse I spoon out the seeds and water into a loose cedar-mulch medium, and wash them into the medium with rainwater. (I don't otherwise cover the seeds.)