Summary Little is still known about the effect of seed colour on the germination of Scots pine. Using Scots pine seed from the English Midlands, we found that seeds were readily divided into dark and light categories and that light seeds could be further divided into 4 sub-groups. Dark seeds exhibited high values of mass and viability, whereas all shades of light seeds showed lower mass and poorer germination. Commercial seed lots contained very few light seeds. We also observed that dark seed had dark wings, and this was related to tree age, since younger trees produced more dark winged seeds than older trees. The mass of dark seeds could be predicted from the mass of random samples of 100 mixed seeds, and the mean mass of 100 dark seeds can be used to predict the number of dark seeds within the sample.