What is the best way to gather seed from Monarda species?

Question

There are various Monarda species growing where I live, both in gardens and in the wild, including Monarda fistulosa, Monarda didyma (Scarlet bee-balm), Monarda punctata (Spotted horsement), and others. They all have relatively similar structure to the seedheads after flowering, a large cluster of these little narrow tubes.

When I've tried collecting seeds, I've tried just plucking off the seedheads and holding them upside down, shaking and/or rubbing them, and although some seed always comes out, a lot of it stays in the tubes, and it's an awkward, time-consuming process that yields not that much of the tiny seed.

Would it be more effective to just break the seedheads off whole and then sow or discard the whole seedheads, where I want to grow the plant from seed? Or is there any quick and easy way for me to get more of the fine seeds out of the seedheads when collecting it?

Answer 1

When I collected monarda seed in the past, I picked the ripe seedpods, dried them, put them on an old cookie sheet that had a small raised edge, and then broke them up using a hammer and my fingers. This freed up all of the seed but also created a ton of chaff. I then got rid of a lot of the chaff by tilting the cookie sheet toward me, shaking it a bit to try to get the seed to move to the bottom of the sheet, and then gently blowing across the top of the seed/chaff mix to blow away the chaff. This worked pretty well, actually, because I didn't need to have perfectly clean seed.