(zone 3~4) Sorry for the late response after your prompt one, my last semester of college was a rough one and I don't get online much now that I am out (hopefully....still waiting on the diplomas to be mailed out). Anyways, I should clarify a couple of my statements. Yes, Chester takes a lot of damage in this region my plants are young but the person I got them (I'm in a cold valley and she is on a hill) has had flowers every year that I have been there (said she had no damage at all a few years ago when we had an extremely warm winter). I have dozens of flowers on Triple Crown this year which is comparable to Chester but sadly my Darrow has yet to produce a single flower and I have had it planted longer. Part of this is the effects of erect vs semi-erect habit (Chester gets a little more protection from snow than Darrow does here). Darrow may very well be more hardy in your region than Chester but for me it is not. I'm actually tempted to try some zone 7 trailing brambles (have tayberry/boysenberry/newberry), with mulch and snow cover (if were lucky enough to keep it through the winter like we have the last two years) they could be brought to flower, all ya need is one, if the cross works.... For self-incompatibility I am mostly pulling from memory of a bramble breeding book I rented for a summer and have not physically confirmed this with wild types. But I believe the reds had most of the self-incompatibility bred out of them. Also, since blacks generally only have limited primocane fruiting it seems likely that the ancestry of Niwot's wild black raspberry parent had a cultivated red in it's background or even a wild red somewhere which lead to the self-incompatibility of its sibling release (the first wild purple I remember finding had/has pretty decent primocane fruiting have used it in a fair amount of my crosses). The germination rates I mentioned of 30~50% is with scarification and several months of stratification i peat moss. However, before my last post I had planted some stratified but unscarred open pollinated blackberry seeds, all were under-ripe which may be of importance. Prime Jim and Prime Ark 45 seeds were also froze and frosted numerous times (which keep them from fully ripening). Black Satin had a poor but acceptable level of germination for this discussion, Prime Jim was the worst of the three with only 3 germination out of a couple hundred seeds but Prime Ark 45 had several hundred germination out of one to two thousand seeds perhaps a 10 to 15 percent germination rate. So it can work but genotype may play a big roll in germination rates of scarred seeds. The ripeness and frost/freeze would also play a role. Also for long-term storage seeds would not kept "moist" or be stored in peat moss but I would think that the proper humidity level would be crucial (think they have been stored for 20 yrs).

thanks! I'm passing this along...

I think razorback is right - this is a tough plant to transplant. I would try taking as large a section of ground as you can and moving it intact. I am talking about cutting a sod of this plant and moving a section a foot thick, or as close to a foot as you can get. The thicker the better. Take along a shallow box - the type of box a case of canned beer comes in - with one end or side opened flat. Once you have made vertical cuts around a piece of sod, slide your shovel under the sod to separate it from the soil beneath, then slide the whole thing into the box. Carefully slide it out when you get home. I have tried many times to move club mosses but always failed. Moving some with soil intact might work.

Thanks for the heads up! Very cool!