I've kept hips for several years and the seeds still germinated for me. You can try soaking them but it might not help. Rose hips are very hard. I just use a good sharp knife an cut them open. Don't worry about cutting the seeds, they're even harder than the hips! After you get them out of the hip clean them really well to get all the bits of hip material off of them. It's thought that there is some kind of enzyme in the hip material that inhibits germination. I put them in a fine sieve and scrub them against the sides under running water. Again, this won't hurt them. Then you can soak them in some hydrogen peroxide for a few minutes. This will keep some of the mold down. Wrap them in a damp paper towel, seal the towel in a plastic zip bag and put them in your fridge for a few weeks. When you check them don't be worried if there's mold on the towel. It doesn't hurt them and there are some studies they say certain molds aid in germination. If they've germinated you'll be able to tell easily. The little greenish white root will be sticking out of the seed. Carefully get the seed out of the paper towel and put it in seed starting mix. If you have starter trays that works best. If not start it in a cup but make sure it's starter soil not potting soil. I don't pot up to potting soil until they have at least 2 sets of true leaves. Put it under lights if you have them. If not in your sunniest window. Like the others have said it will not be "The Doctor" but it's own new variety and depending on how it was pollinated can look behave totally different. Have fun!

Bird, try sowing your C. brachytricha indoors in about April to get a bit of a head start. When the grass starts to get on the leggy side give it a 'brush cut' and this will encourage it to bulk-up. ( correct words escape me at this time of night). Given an earlier start it might just bloom for you in the first year. Btw, my plants started blooming today. Gorgeous!

Brian, There are several books on tissue culture that give more details on zygotic embryo culture than the In Vitro Plant Breeding book that I referenced. I mentioned it first because it is introductory, and I happen to have a copy of it. I think "zygotic embryo culture" is the technical term for the subject of your inquiry. Many of the books in this subject area are relatively expensive, so you will benefit from learning to use Amazon's Search Inside! feature. You can find more detail in the book, Introduction to Plant Tissue Culture by M. K. Razdan, in Chapter 11 (beginning on page 128) titled "Zygotic Embryo Culture". Apparently you can't link directly to specific pages within a book. At least, I don't know how to do it. But this link, Search Inside! Introduction to Plant Tissue Culture should get you inside where you can enter the search string "129" in the Search box and press the red Go button to get a list of hits for that string. At the top of the list is hit 1. "on page 129" and clicking on that will link you to page 129, which is the second page in Chapter 11. Just use the left arrow in the margin of page 129 to go to the beginning of Chapter 11 on what would be page 128 if it had a page number, which it doesn't. At $49.50, that book is fairly affordable, but it is temporarily out of stock at Amazon. Another good book, Plant Tissue Culture: Theory and Practice by Bhojwani and Razdan costs $370, so there is motivation to use Amazon's Read Inside on it. Once you get into the Read Inside your target is Chapter 11, titled Zygotic Embryo Culture, beginning on page 297. Entering "297" in the Search box is the quickest way to find a link to that page, because it does have a page number. There are a bunch of good books on tissue culture, and tissue culture techniques can be used to culture embryos that otherwise wouldn't develop into viable seeds. That makes it possible to grow interspecific and even intergeneric hybrids that wouldn't grow without using zygotic embryo culture techniques. You might be interested in the Kitchen Culture Kits, Inc. website. Dr. Carol M. Stiff is the proprietor, and she might be able to put together a kit specifically adapted to your zygotic embryo culture needs. MM

I have a bur oak that i bought from lowes that I planted in Fall 2005. It was probably 5 feet tall. Maybe 4.5 feet tall for 5 gallon. It grew about 8 inches for 2006. This year, it has grown 2 feet already and is in its 2nd growth spurt right now. It's amazing how much growth it has put on this year. I was hoping for 3 feet of growth and it looks like I might get more than that with all the rain! I had shumard oak that REALLY GREW this spring after planting it in fall 2005. Unfortunately, that violent storm over a month ago snapped it in half. Looks like for 5-7 gallon, 4-7 feet height, it takes a year to establish roots before they really take off in 2nd year. I can confirm that oak trees grow VERY LONG TAPROOT. I planted a bunch of acorns in the small cups and didnt think about roots since they have grown only 3-4 inches. When i took them out of the small cups, i was shocked to see all those long tap root circling around in the cups. Lesson learned. It's best to air prune them! I am curious how fast oak trees grow when planted as an acorn. I probably will experiment with that on my "retirement" land (thats a long time away :( ) and there are area that I want to grow trees for privacy. There's no water there for me to water container trees so Im stuck with planting seeds or very small seedlings. Anyway, the oak trees that I grew in small cups last year hasn't really grown very much this year. I had to prune the tap root off. Apparently from reading about tap roots, they do not like their tap root pruning and will significantly slow the growth. Oh well.