hibiscus and azalea seeds

Are the seeds the tiny round ends of the long stem coming out of the flower? I don't even know if that question made sense, but I don't know how to harvest the seeds of these two plants.

At least for the hibiscus, "tiny round ends" doesn't sound like seeds. I'm only familiar with the tropicals, but I'm assuming the seed pods on the hardies would look similar. Tropical hibiscus make pods...someone posted a pic of one somewhere over on the hibsicus forum so you might browse around over there and see if you can find it (I have one on my hard drive too, if you haven't found it I can post tonight when I get home from work). The pods are sort of the same size and shape as the buds when they first start and they form right where the flower used to be. If your hibiscus are tropical though, unless you're hand-pollinating them, seed pods are a relatively rare occurrence, so it's entirely possible that your plant might not have any.

If the flower is still there, I wonder if what you're talking about are the stamens (this would go for both hibiscus and azalea)? Those are the things that stick up out of the middle of the flower and have pollen on them. For hibiscus, you won't see a seedpod until after the flower falls off, then a little time goes by, and then if you're going to get a seedpod it'll start to form. I would imagine it's similar for azaleas, but the pods may be a different shape (I've grown azaleas before and never seen seeds either, so they may be like hibiscus and need to be hand pollinated, or some of the hybrid cultivars may be sterile and not make seeds)

sounds like you are right about the stamins. It also sounds like seeds will be rare if at all. Hmmmm, how do you get them then. Can you buy them?

Like ecrane said, the hibiscus' seedpod is about the side of its flower's bud. Here is a ripe tropical hibiscus that has gone onto to seeds, and became ripe. Rarely I'd see these on my trop. hib. The flower only hang on a day or two - thus if insect don't find them and pollinate them before they wither.

When the semi-oval seedpod with a pointed end dried and popped; it looks like these. The seeds is mid-size about the size of cottonseed? (Those are black seeds inside the opened dried pod).

2busy--do you have tropical hibiscus or hardies? For tropicals if you want seeds you typically have to hand-pollinate the flowers. You can also get seeds from the American Hibiscus Society if you don't want to go to all the trouble of trying to get your own. The catch with tropical seeds is that all the pretty tropicals are hybrids and don't come true from seed, so you don't know what you're going to get. Some of the babies may be quite plain and boring, but you may get lucky and get some really pretty ones too.

Hardies may do a better job getting pollinated without assistance, but with tropicals unless you help them your seedpods will be few and far between. I got 1 seedpod this year, and I have a ton of different plants, and quite frequently several were blooming all on the same day (I didn't do any hand pollination, my one seedpod was pure luck...but it was 1 out of probably 100 blooms or so that I had over the course of the summer)