Sounds really great, guys. Good luck. Will be very interesting to follow your progress!
I started this thread mostly out of curiosity, since my garden is more than full of plants already and I haven't got room for at lot more. Save perhaps for a verified more coldhardy basjoo variety/clone than the ones I grow and/or a form/hybrid with nice edible fruit and/or one with stable variegation!
But still I wonder if there aren't anyone on this board who have already successfully grown their own basjoo seeds or wild collected basjoo seeds (in China) and grown them into mature plants? There certainly must be a lot of gardeners out there worldwide (but not on this board perhaps?) who have tried!
Or could the lack of available seed be that since (according to David Constantine) much of the basjoo material in cultivation apparently belong to very few god/bad clones, these clones don't like to be selfed? And if they are, their seed have very low viability? Or is it simply that basjoo seed generally have low viability (unless very fresh?).
Or could part of the reason for no seeds be that most basjoos grown today are produced through micropropagation? Because, again according to Constantine, ” the fact that normally M. basjoo is shy suckering and this can be seen in old established plants such as at Overbecks Garden at Sharpitor, Devon that have only ever been subject to conventional propagation from suckers.” As opposed to micropropagation that is ”a process that essentially accelerates natural suckering through exposure of shoots to synthetic cytokinin in vitro” and the resulting plants thereby use most of their energy on the new offsets and become less willing to flower?
Or is it just because, it is easier to produce/buy the micropropagated plants and people don't want to bother with the seeds? I don't know. But it still pussels me.
However this is all speculation on my part. Please feel free to oppose it!
Now I will forget theory and go out and enjoy my spring garden! That is, essentially, what gardening is about to me!
