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.

They are probably seedlings. Mine have never suckered but I have seedlings popping up everywhere in a 8' radius of each. Transplanting them shouldn't be a problem.

This is funny and a coincidence. Just yesturday I removed 25 rose of sharon trees, roots and all. I planted them very closely years ago along my fence to give me privacy from cars going down my small lane. I kept them pruned to about 5 feet high-just at the level of someone's head sitting down in a car and looking over. It was good privacy but now I think it is junky looking. That same evening, the neighbors were walking down the lane and yelled out to me (I was inside the house in a solarium, sitting down and not facing the lane) "hey Lucille, what happened to the rose of sharons?" I waved my hand backward to acknowledge them. Gads, I am now soo exposed in my solarium that anyone can see in especially in the evening. So now I have the wonderful task of figuring out what I am going to put on this side for privacy. What about a leather leaf viburnun?( By the way, I did not dig those roots out by myself. I do not have a cleaning person, but I do hire someone to help me in my garden.)

Thanks for your comment. Always good to have more than one opinion. You will laugh at this (I'm laughing. . .), but this is not my first attempt to grow a cutting from this rose of sharon. Briefly, I had a beautiful rose of sharon bush at the front of my house for more than 15 years (white with maroon throats), but one very hot, dry summer, it died. The following spring, a root from the bush grew up in the middle of a very old holly bush 20 ft. away. Three branches would grow two feet taller than the holly and put out at least two dozens blossoms every year (for about 6 years). It looked really weird, but kind of like a Japanese painting. Now that bush-in-a-bush has died. The first year in the holly I snatched a cutting and began growing it. After it grew good roots in water, I transferred it to a pot and it grew for three years and then died. I did that three times (this is the third attempt). I'm now at the three year mark, but the "bush" is in a much larger pot and might actually continue growing there. But I had a bush die at the end of a row of bridal wreath, so I'm going to transfer my potted rose of sharon at that spot. It's really the only place I can put it in my very shady yard. It's the only spot that gets any full sun. The bridal wreath are well established and get filtered sun, really all they need. But the spot where the rose of sharon will go gets full sun probably four hours a day and filtered sun for the rest of the day. The cutting, although about 28-30" tall, doesn't look bush-like yet and hasn't blossomed. It does have just one stem, but two smaller branches have begun to grow more than a foot up from the bottom, like you would expect. I wish I could add a picture, but I don't have camera software on this computer yet (and being a Luddite I don't have a cell phone with a camera) :).