I'd be interested in the rooted cuttings of Flying Dragon. Could offer established seedlings of lychee or loquat. Or look at my trade list & LMK if there's anything you're interested in.

Hi Ishuku, I'm not sure why I would like such a dangerous-looking plant, but I'd like to get some seeds. I'll try the Wesleyan email address that you've provided. Thanks! Lisa

I have some remarks. I grew a grapefruit from seed in circa the late 1980s. I'm not sure of the exact date but this tree definitely did already exist in 1991, although it was little more than a shoot at the time. I live in Switzerland and at the time was living with my parents who had a garden. The tree would spend the summers in the sunniest spot in the garden and come indoors in the winter. When I was at university my mother took care of this tree for me. However, circa 2000 the tree suffered a vey nasty attack by sticky mites and I had to prune the tree back quite heavily as washing or spraying didn't help. The tree recovered from this remarkably quickly, with new leaves sprouting out of the stubs within weeks after pruning. In 2003, the opportunity arose to move the tree to my parents' holiday home in the south of Spain. Basically this was a container with a lot of furniture and the tree didn't take kindly to being locked inside that dark and hot container for several days while being knocked about on the back of a truck and so lost most of its leaves. With days of being planted in the garden there it lost the rest of its leaves and I left it for dead. Returning the next year, however, it had sprouted fresh branches. Some years later, during my absence, my father had a gardener in who pruned the tree back heavily. The gardener also wanted to rip it out and replace it by a nice one from his garden centre and I had to do a lot of arguing to make him understand the significance of that tree and my dad wasn't exactly helpful. Then things went from bad to worse as in 2006 my mother passed away and she was the only person besides myself to really care about the tree (or in fact anything in the garden). The last time I saw the tree was in 2007 and that year the tree had about 4 blossoms (the first in its life), one of which had already swollen and there was the beginning of a grapefruit, already half an inch in diameter. The tree was no more than about 4 foot tall and to me it was a very happy sight. However, my dad picked up a strange girlfriend who hated anything that had anything to do with my dad's previous life including the fact that he had kids or that anything was important to us. The house was sold even though the guy who bought it put in a lower bid than I would have bid had I known it was up for sale. The new owner ripped out the garden for a swimming pool. A very sad story. But I decided not to give up and I have a three year old grapefruit grown from my seed on my balcony right now. I hope one day to see it flower and bear fruit. I also have a miniature orange tree which I bought from a local garden store. It is laden with fruit all year round. I guess it must be grafed but I cannot say where as I think I can recognise a graft when I see one but this tree doesn't seem to have such a place. My next project is to get a three-leaf orange. I understand this is the only citrus tree that can be planted outside in my type of climate (sustained sub-freezing temperatures in winter plus plenty of snow). Does anybody have any experience with these? Here is a link that might be useful:

My FD was exactly 3' tall when I planted it in July '04. It's now 6'. Taller than that if you consider the half dozen or so sparse branches at the top. I don't consider that terribly slow growing. Mine produced lots of fruit 1st time this year and it's never been bothered by insects. Btw, it's still holding on to all it's leaves but they're starting to yellow up. I got my tree from Edible Landscaping outside Charlottesville, Va. They have a beautiful specimen there that was about 10' when I saw it last 2 yrs ago. Nice day trip from where I live just west of Frederick.