The C group of seeds was taken from the most recent fall of the three. You can see in the pic a few posts up what the flower looked like....all dead but still some obvious structure. And I picked those seeds directly out of the pods (I had to dodge the irritated spiders
)
The A&B groups were take from older falls (I didn't take any pics of those two for some reason I am now not sure about) which had mostly disintegrated. The seeds I picked up were the ones mostly sitting on the soil surface, but there were a number of more relatively buried seeds and very young sprouts intermixed in the the immediate area which were, by my interpretation anyway, obviously from the same flower.
I didn't take seeds from any plants that were still standing. I might have except I didn't really see any with 'fruit' that looked mature enough.