Seed Collecting - Some Fundamental Advice

What's missing here?

What's missing here? How about some organization. 

Last Wednesday, KL, our provider of native plants took us on a tour of the Parking Lot Garden and Road Garden pointing out each plant, showing us how to tell when the seed was ripe and demonstrating how to remove the seed from the plants. 

Here is the list of seeds that we collected last week.

I now need to take a photograph of each seed sample. The bags are identified (thanks DH!) but I do not have photographs of what the plant looked like before we harvested the seed. Now, for some seeds, it's quite obvious what the source plant looks like e.g. coneflower, monarda, iris. However, that is the minority. So here is my advice when accompanying a plant expert on a plant id workshop:

1. bring a camera and take a picture of each plant when it is identified by the expert
2. bring a notebook and record and number each plant identified, or, in the case of seed collecting, number each bag in order along with the name of the plant identified
3. when reviewing your photographs after the workshop, add the number and plant identification to each photograph
4. and of course, with seeds, then take a picture of the individual seeds and add the number and plant identification to each photograph

The reason for this post is that I only remembered Step 1 with about three plants to go. The bags are identified (thanks DH!) but not numbered - so much for Step 2. I don't think I can match the photographs I took to any of the bags and I do not particularly remember what the original plants in their ripened state looked like - also no for Step 3.

I can do Step 4. Yippee!