James, I have no issues with the heat because they grow inside my house. I never put them outside, even for a couple of minutes. I grow them in a spare room that has a large window that gets early morning sun. I also have them under cheap grow lights that clip onto something that's near the plants. The grow lights take an ordinary grow bulb or you can use those long square grow light bulbs. Either type will work and the total cost is really cheap. Ever since I found out about the water my plants are growing fast. I use only organic fert. since the other types of fert. can burn the roots. The organic can not burn the roots. A guy that I purchase miltoniopsis plants from told me that since most tap water is purified to get rid of bacteria and other things most tap water contains chlorine and chorline burns the delicate roots. I never thought about this before and since I found out about chlorine being in most tap water, this makes sense plus you can smell the faint odor of chlorine in the tap water. I can't tolerate the heat so I stay inside and I set my thermostat at 70 degrees. If I'm happy with the temps. the plants are probably happy too. I almost forgot one important issue. I have a humidifier working 24 hours. It's a real cheap humidifier that I purchased off of Etsy. The humidifier looks like a fat white stick. I stick it in an old plastic water jug and you can see the mist coming out. Apparently it works real well. I can't tell you the brand because it came in a company box and everything is in Chinese including the instructions. I think that the humidifier cost me around five bucks. My set up is cheap but I haven't killed any plants. I currently have about seven plants putting out spikes. I have about twenty plants and I don't want anymore. I'll probably get another one only if the flower color appeals to me or if it's a cross that I don't have.

I have three C. dichotoma 'Issai' that I have cut back every spring for years. The last two years were very hard on them--two years ago two weeks of 90 degree weather at the end of March and then four nights of hard freeze in the high teens. Then last spring was very cold, they were very late to leaf out and the summer was a drought. This spring I didn't cut them back so as not to stress them anymore, and leafing out and regrowth has been very slow and sparse. I'm thinking they will survive, but they certainly have taken a hit.

Early Amethyst is not a ppaf (plant patent applied for) variety and this has nothing to do with coming true from seed. Your seedlings are most likley just imature at will flower as they reach maturity. My experience with seeding Calicarpa is that there is little variation in the seedlings are most all look just like the parents. Just be patient and you will get flowers and berries.

It's all good, Gal. I've oft noted the less than clearcut "northerlieness" of varied locations, like your Maine example.........and depending on which type of map one is viewing, the various types of distortions necessary to fitting all the land masses on the flat sheet of paper.....can even distort this further. But no matter. Whaas, I like Symphoricarpos too, although I do know of some folks having that plant in their gardens wishing they didn't, what with the vigorously stoloniferous habit it has. Guess it all goes down to where you have it and what you are trying to accomplish. But you're right-it is very reminiscent of the shrub genus in discussion here. I'd be more inclined to use coralberry where I wanted straight-up colonization of a portion of a site, in other words, a more naturalistic planting. I think it is native to our part of the world as well. For that matter, the white-fruited Symphoricarpos alba is quite nice too. Rina, I have to admit, I see Toronto and other Canada words in your posts and get the idea we're in similar climactic conditions, but we're still colder here, never rising above a Z5 designation. Then there's years like last year, where cold-hardiness is really put to the test here. We shall see. This is a fun topic for discussion, but that's really about all it is at this point! +om