Sending an email.

" There is also a very large, and interesting plantation of them in Maui, not the southeast, but still a really warm humid climate" Nope! Wrong again! The redwoods there are mostly planted above 5000', a climate where dewpoints are always << 60F, thus nights are going to be in the 50s at worse, and even 30s and 40s in winter. Highs probably never hit 80f, even during the worst heatwaves. Not at all a "really warm humid climate". A few are a bit lower, down to 3000', but their growth seems to become abnormal. Even there, summer are as cool or cooler than Boston's!

I got some cryptomeria seeds, too. Already stratified. I'll send you them when I get around to it and can stomach standing in line at the post office. Seedlings are HIGHLY prone to damping off. Seriously, it's ridiculous, the mortality rate on young seedlings until they're about eight months to a year old. Use a sterilized acid soil (commonly sold under "rhododendron/camelia/azalea" mix).

Reproduction of giant sequoia is spotty at best, even in its native groves in the Sierra Nevada of CA. I don't have my reference book on the matter before me now, but a number of the groves consist of very old trees only and have zero reproduction. And those that do have some fair amount of reproduction, this reproduction is not resulting in much, if any expansion of the groves beyond the boundaries outlined by the very oldest trees. In all my hiking through the groves, the only place where I would say reproduction is anything like abundant is where the old trees were logged and the area subsequently burned. One of the best areas to see this reproduction is in the old logged Boole Tree Grove in the Converse Basin (originally one of the finest of all the groves), but I can't at this point remember well enough to say that the reproduction even there has been adequate enough to ensure the new grove will be as large as the one destroyed by the logging/fire. Fire seems to aid reproduction, but virtually all of the old groves have had fire run through them at fairly frequent intervals--usually one or more times each century--but even this frequency of fire which would favor conditions for seed germination has not resulted in any reproduction in many of the groves for literally hundreds of years. And this lack of reproduction cannot be explained by any reduction in the percentage of fertile seed from very old trees. I have read that giant sequoia trees are one of a very few kinds of trees where fertility does not decrease with age. I really have not heard any good explanation for the lack of natural reproduction in so many of the sequoia groves and its general lack of abundance anywhere in its natural range. --Spruce