Although Fritillaria raddeana has bloomed in this garden four years in succession, it has never set seed here. And I've never seen seed of this species. However, if the seed is anything like that of its close relative F. imperialis or F. persica, I would take into consideration the weight and thickness of the seed. You probably will not be able to see the embryo in these opaque seeds. Place some of the seed on a sheet of paper, curl the sheet a bit to make a trough, then blow gently over the seed to remove the chaff. If you are left with seeds which seem heavy for their size, they are probably viable. In the old lily literature there have been reports from persons who sowed chaff left over from the seed exchanges and got some germination. So in the case of rare, scarce seed or seed of particularly valuable crosses, sow everything, chaff included. In most lily and tulip seeds, the embryo is plainly evident as a slightly curved streak up the middle of the seed. But in some cases, the embryo is not well developed; and macroscopic examination of these seeds will turn up no evidence of an embryo. Don't throw these away if they are valuable - it seems that some of them germinate. Kathleen, tulips in my experience give very variable results with respect to seed production. Some, such as Tulipa tarda, produce pods full of seed, every one with a prominent embryo and presumably fully viable. Hybrid tulips on the other hand generally produce few normal seeds - pods will develop normally, but most of the material in the pod is chaff. What you described (when you gave percentages) sounded to me like the results seen in hybrid tulips, where often only one or two seeds per pod even look close to normal. One sometimes sees dark, wet, puffy seed-like structures which, when removed from the pod and dried, quickly shrivel and dry to a crisp. In my experience, those plants which produce pods of normal-looking seed also produce seed with a very high rate of viability. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/