Collecting Basil Seeds

For the past year, I grew my basil in a pot so that when winter came, I could bring it indoors. My pot of basil did thrive all year long. With the early arrival of spring, I thought I would take the basil outside to repot it into a bigger pot. I started breaking off some of the long stems with flowers and noticed little black seeds inside of each flower. I was very excited at this discovery and immediately grabbed a little container to collect some seeds.

Each tiny flower contains 3-4 seeds. Now it became obvious to me that basil is a self-pollinator since this pot of basil has been inside of the green house most of the time. No bees have come in contact with the flowers.