Below is a brief guide to help you collect the maximum seeds from your carnivorous plants.

After the flowers have been pollinated and the petals have dropped, the seed head (if pollinated) should start to swell with the ripening seeds. This can take anything from a few weeks to a few months.  With experience, you should be able to tell which seed heads are ripe, although some are harder to detect than others.

There is a very easy way to collect seed, without cutting off the flower stem.  This may be necessary because some plants produce seeds at different times on the same stem. Drosera species produce multiple flowers on a single stem; the seeds from the lower flowers can be ripe, before the flowers further up have even opened.

Cut a sheet of A4 paper into 4 pieces. Fold each one in half to get a crease down the middle. You now have four collecting sheets. Hold one of the sheets under each seedpod. On smaller species, it may be easier to lay the pot on its side, so that when you tap the seedpod, the seeds fall directly onto the paper.

When the seed is ripe, it should fall easily onto the paper when the seedpod is tapped or shaken lightly. Using this method, all the seed from a particular species can be collected over a few days or weeks, without having to remove the seed heads.

The paper can then be folded like an envelope to contain the seed inside. This paper also absorbs any moisture and helps to keep the seeds dry. Plastic bags or envelopes cannot remove moisture, which can rot the seeds that you have carefully collected. It is also a lot easier to plant seeds from an envelope or paper; static may cause them to stick to plastic and they can be almost impossible to tip out.