Mystery Canaries...


Which are really gifts of mystery seed-pods, picked up by a friend on holiday there - she's a photographer not a gardener so the pods came with no IDs and not even a memory of where precisely they were collected. I'm hoping that, though their identity is dark to me, descriptions of the main two will induce cries of o-that-old-thing from all you *genuine* Med-people...
 
The first pods are like two pressed-together miniature turtle-shells: say 3" long by 2" wide, almost no 'depth' at all; dark brown in colour and the (few) seeds inside very like those of, say, Cardiocrinum.
 
And the second are like miniature 'conkers' from a horse-chestnut, dried to a deep black-brown: the pods are say half an inch long and wide, heavily 'prickled.' Inside, three sizeable bean-like seeds per pod, each seed in its own compartment. In colour they're a pale coffee-pink (ie pale brown but with a pink flush) with darker brown markings.
 
That's it. I haven't sown them yet (shan't until spring) so no description as yet available of any (possible...) resulting seedlings.
 
I'd guess the first might be a climber, the second a shrub. Anyone able to venture any more (they could hardly be less...) particular identifications? TIA to anyone brave enough to have a try.
 
Tim
 
- on the seasonless Solway Firth, Cumbria, UK, where the roses and the passionflowers are still blooming, the ceanothus and Pittosporum tobira are out for the third time this year, and the primroses and hellebores are convinced, judging by their flowers, that it's already Spring....


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