I've been waiting to post to see if my orange esperanza survived. Still no signs of any green showing. I would be happy to trade for your Liatris mucronata seeds. We can mail or trade at the Denton swap. Actually I may have a very small plant I could bring to the swap. I saw 1 coming up so far from the seeds I planted.

Don't know why it posted twice?? Anyway got your email if you see something on my list like, we can set up a trade, do you have anything else trade would love to see if we can do a multiple trade

I would like to add a bit of information for those who will be recipients of Mechelle's largess. I experimented with various ages of Aristolochia Fimbriata seeds this summer. Old seed fared the worst regarding germination with only two seeds germinating from old seed. For my experiment with fresh seed (seed gathered this summer), I had one seed germinate fairly quickly and no more for weeks. All of a sudden, this morning (Aug 16), I noticed four new seedlings pushing up. This seed was started July 6th, making 5 weeks before decent germination has begun. So please just keep your germination medium damp and wait. Don't give up on them. These seed apparently take several weeks to begin germinating. I know fallen seed in my patch germinate throughout the summer but I've never tried to time them from the time they fall onto the pine bark mulch until I see tiny plants emerging. The poor little vines have been steadily eaten until only parts of the bare vines are left. Finally, with no PV cats left on them, the vines began putting on new leaves and along comes mama pipevine butterfly and now, the vines are bare again. This last batch of cats also ate the newly germinated seedlings. It will be interesting to see if the vines bounce back next spring. Mary

Yesterday on a trip to the blackland prairie my perception of Aristolochia fimbriata as a small pipevine was shattered by the sight of plants that could simply not be described as a small vine. A proper description would have been lush, vibrant, and certainly no less than a medium sized Aristolochia, but these babies were more impressive in mere foliar mass than all of my pipevines except A. gigantea. The leaves were huge, their spread was wide and dense, and the amount of foliage before my eyes coming from a single plant was in excess of all of my pipevines excluding A. gigantea. Greater than that of the A. tomentosa, A. californica, A. serpentaria, A. elegans, and the A. fimbriata growing upon my grounds. The gardener who over saw these spectacular specimens had free range chickens roaming about whom de caterpillared the host plants. This could be the reason that these plants attained such great size along with the fertilization by manure. My plants have always been eaten to the ground by pipevine or goldrim swallowtails several times a year. Also these received a good bit more sun than all of mine. Well, I am going to plant some A. fimbriata in a very sunny spot up at the woods property.