You have a phenomenal list! I wish I had more to trade, but I've only been at gardening for three years. We're zone buddies. I have red current tomato & Greek Yevani Basil (I'm not sure if that's the type you want). If you want these 2, I would like the black prince tomato and jumbo Yellow spanish onion. My trading list link is below--let me know if there's anything else you're interested in on my humble list. Will Here is a link that might be useful: My Trading List

just realized this is an old link, but was just gathering my ROS seeds today and stumbled across the forum. We have a 50 year old ROS "tree" in front of our house. We've pruned it to have a fairly thick trunk and it's like a gorgeous bouquet in the early fall. Last year is the first I ever gathered seeds, we've always spent much time plucking starts out of the yard. I've found, the key to harvesting ROS seeds is to pick the seed pods when they've just dried out and snap off easily. if you wait too long they will have opened too much and spilled all the seed into the ground. we have two "trees" out front and get random starts all over the yard from the yearly re-seeding, so Mother Nature handles the seeds really well and apparently they overwinter without any help from us and germinate quite readily. they are hearty here.

kman04 - you're awesome! It is a Gold Medallion Tree (Cassia leptophylla). I tried for quite some time to identify my own local example of this tree last night online, after spotting it once again while out wandering my neighborhood. but the closest I got was the Golden Shower Tree (C. fistula). That's close, but no cigar, as the seed pods are just that - cigar-like. They're cylindrical, and don't have the right coloring and textures as the pods of C. leptophylla, which are very rectangular in cross-section. I brought home 2 of the huge pods last night. They're about 15"-20" long, and rattle like a rattlesnake tail. They're falling off it this month, making a big mess. I first noticed the tree last year when it exploded in yellow blooms, especially as the car parked under it (and under it again last night and tonight) is a sporty little yellow car, the same shade of yellow. It looked really cool, as the plume of branches and flowers made a matched-color umbrella over the car. The tree is between the sidewalk and street - a city-planted 'street tree,' and I've not seen another anywhere around here. I'm in zone 10, and registering here on this site just now, reading the page about zones, I saw this snippet in the zone 10 info: "You can't grow apples, but you can grow tropical fruits, as well as Bougainvillea spectabilis (bougainvillea), ***Cassia fistula (golden shower)***, Eucalyptus citriodora (lemon eucalyptus), Ficus elastica (rubber plant), Ensete vetricosum (Abyssinian banana), and Roystonea regia (royal palm)." Emphasis (***) mine. Cassia (Cassias?) grow very well here, apparently, in west LA. There are 2 very tall E. citriodora's across the street from me, too. Also, leaves of Bougainvillea keep blowing into my yard, though I've not figured out from where yet. Anyway, checking Dave's Garden's site for the gold medallion tree, every pic is a solid match to my tree. I brought home a twig of 4 of its long, opposite leaves tonight, between 11 and 13 leaflet pairs per leaf, and they match the DG pics exactly. The long, dark, rectangular-cross-section seed pods are a deed match, too, and both match the pic submitted here by the OP. The flowers in the DG pics match my memory of them (not blooming currently). I'm sold! It's a gold medallion tree. Great work, kman04, and thanks to everyone for helping me and the OP figure it out. Oh, and just as a side note: the seed pod skins smell a great deal like fruit roll-ups. Strawberry, I think. I'm wondering about distilling essential oils from them now :) Here is a link that might be useful: Dave's Garden - Gold Medallion Tree (Cassia leptophylla)

There's nothing quite as cool-looking(temperaturewise) as BLUE flowers. I grew Phacelia a few years ago, best blue i ever saw, next to cornflowers. The bell-shaped blue flowers with icy-white anthers were beautiful, and stirred up images of cooler weather. They do have a short bloom time, hot weather just about stops the show, cutting back helps somewhat. Give 'em a try, i believe there are 2 or 3 varieties. Good luck, and enjoy.