For business reasons I've visited Nasami Farm and WOW!! Will now always go in the afternoon so plants won't have to sit in the car all day :-) BTW: The business reason is to help Nasami get itself more well known. I'm working with for-profit local nurseries trying to have them "sponsor" some TV advertising for this incredible non-profit on garden and home related TV channels. If anyone knows any OWNER of a for-profit that may want a good bit of exposure for a great cause, at a resonable rate, email me privately. Nasami has not been officially approached but if I get enough sponsors to run some ads, we'll see what they think. Martie Thanks! Martie

Jay, Nothing they sell is F-1 unless clearly stated, and I don't know even know if any of them are hybrids as sold by them, although in the real world they are hybrids. Since they don't label once they are beyond F2 of F3, we have no way of knowing how stable what they sell would be if it is a hybrid variety they've dehybridized. Helen, Like Jay, I would assume the OPs would grow true. However, unless they bag blossoms or grow each heirloom variety in isolation cages, there's no guarantee. Jay rarely has crossing from the seeds he saves so I think it likely Knapp's is the same way, but there's no way for us to know that....all we can do is assume it. Dawn

Diane, There are many native plums and it can be hard to tell them apart, but here's some info that should help. Chickasaw Plum (Prunus angustifolia), and AKA Sandhill Plum, Sand Plum, Red Plum and Western Plum: These are small, very twiggy, thicket-forming tall shrubs to small trees that top out aroung 10-12' tall, depending on their soil and annual rainfall. The branches are slender and have reddish new growth, especially in spring. The leaves are lanceolate and about 3-4" long. The Chickasaw Plum branches sometimes are a bit prickly or spiny. They have white flowers, or sometimes pink flowers, that are about 1/2" across and appear in huge numbers in early spring, usually in March or April. These trees can produce either yellow or red fruit. In our climate the fruit ripens form May through July. These are commonly found in old pastures that aren't mowed, along fencelines/roadways, and sometimes on the sunny edges of woodlands. They are most often seen in Oklahoma, Arkansas and the eastern half of Texas. Though small, the fruit is tasty and makes great jam or jelly. Sand Plum (Prunis texana) is a very dwarf plant that is more of a shrub than a tree. The branches are irregular and the blooms are white and appear shortly efoe the oval leaves. The plums are a little fuzzy, somewhat resembling the fuzziness of a peach but not quite that fuzzy. These grow in poor,disturbed soil. More often seen in Texas, but are sometimes seen then in southern and eastern OK. Mexican Plum (Prunus mexicana): These are tree plums and although several of them may sprout close to one another, they are not thicket plums in the same way that Chickasaw Plums are. These are small, fairly slender trees, although they can get pretty big once they're 20-30 years old. Their leaves are much broader than those on the thicket plums and are oval, 1-3" long, and have serrated edges. The flowers are pink to white and are about twice as large as the flowers on Chicksaw plums. These trees have fairly short lateral branches, at least until they get very old. Their fruit are yellowish/reddish when mature. The wild critters love these plums and you have to fight them for them. Often these trees are found alongside creeks are drainage gullies or sloughs. At our house, these bloom slightly later than the domesticated plums and usually slightly earlier than the Chickasaw Plums. Propagation of wild plums is not that hard, but cold stratification is required because all native plums have a dormant embryo that won't germinate until it has a period of cold stratification. The Mexican Plum also needs a period of after-ripening before the cold stratification begins. To Collect Seed: Collect seed only after fruit is firm, filled out and has turned a dark red (or dark yellow in the case of the yellow ones) to indicate the fruit is fully ripened. You can't collect seed by the calender since seed maturity varies from year to year and even from plant to plant. Clean the seeds from the pulp and then air dry before storing, but do not overdry because it will put the seeds into a deep dormancy that can be hard to break. Depending on your humidity at the time you collect, clean and dry your seed, you may need to dry the seed for only a few hours or perhaps a day. Store at 31-41 degrees Fahrenheit. You don't dry Mexican Plum seed much, if at all, because it lowers their viability. To Germinate Mexican Plum: Collect seed in late June to July, clean the seed, and then put them immediately in warm stratification in flats indoors, or in a raised bed of moist sand outdoors and leave them there until Sept. or Oct. With Mexican Plum, fresh seed quickly loses its viability during storage, so with these plums you want to plant the seed right after it is collected. To cold stratify, move the warm-stratified seeds to cold stratification at no warmer than 41 degrees for 60-90 days. Check weekly. When you see seeds starting to sprout, remove the seed from the flat of sand and plant either in the ground where you want the tree to ultimately grow, or plant them in deep pots. Normally, once your seeds have been cold stratified, they'll germinate in about 3 weeks if they are viable seed. To Germinate Chickasaw Plum, you pretty much do the same thing you did for Mexican Plum, except instead of planting immediately and holding them for fall, you warm stratify for only a couple of weeks and then cold-stratify. At the time you collect these seeds, about 70% of them are viable, but you can increase their chance of sprouting with that 2 weeks of warm stratification. If you want to plant the Chickasaw plums directly outdoors instead of germinating them indoors, keep them in cold storage in your fridge until September. Plant them in the ground in late September and keep the area lightly mulched to keep weeds down until your seeds germinate. The direct-planted seeds will germinate when temperatures are between 50 degrees and about 75-80 degrees. If you want to, you can start all Prunus species from cuttings....either dormant hardwood, softwood, or semihardwood. The best cuttings (or at least the easiest ones) are those from semihardwood cuttings taken in summer. Take the cuttings from the tips of branches, from new stems that are still flexible at the end and only just beginning to turn woody at the base. You don't want them too soft because they'll rot before they can root, so be sure the base is slightly woody for the best results. Take half the leaves off your cuttings, stick them in a rooting hormone or willow water if desired, and plant them in a peat/perlite mix. Keep in a humid area and mist often. You could get good roots within 30 days. Then you can harden off your plants and plant them. I wouldn't plant them in full sun until fall though. It is a LOT easier to just ask a friend or neighbor if you can dig up some of the smallest trees from their pasture or fenceline and transplant them to your place. We've dug up and moved Mexican Plums out of our woodlands in the fall/winter (from October through about early February)when they were 2' to 3' tall and they have fruited the following spring. Dawn

This is complicated. Maybe we should just discuss brownie recipes. In lieu of that, let's just for now try to focus on two aspects of the question, food quality and conservation. Wasn't there someone who, early in the discussion, cited a large study published in Science magazine? I can't find that post now but the study is the most important one I am aware of. The full text can't be accessed at the Science web site without subscribing. It is available elsewhere on the web. The study sampled and compared wild and farmed salmon from many regions around the world. The level of PCBs and other dangerous substances was found to be "significantly" higher in farmed salmon. The word "significant", when used in this sort of document is understood to mean statistically significant, which is not the same as the every day usage. Statistical significance means that a difference between two samples can be proven mathematically at a certain criterion. It does not mean the difference is important. If I sprinkle 2 grains of salt on my order of fries and you sprinkle 4, the difference obviously is statistically significant. But is it important? Neither one is enough salt to affect the taste at all. Significant but not important. The study found, at some locations, levels of certain toxins at 10 or so parts per billion. At those levels, differences of say, 4 parts per billion would be significant. But important? FDA standards allow hundreds of times that concentration. But that is not the end of the controversy. Some, including the authors of the study, prefer the standards of the EPA over those of the FDA. EPA standards are much stricter. This is where science and politics collide. One might think that the "Food" and Drug Administration would take precedence over the "Environmental" Protection Administration in the matter of food safety. But that would be too simple. I have to observe that, although the importance to science of a "not statistically significant" finding is equal to, often greater than, one of "statistically significant". The importance in press releases is not. Everyone wants the results of their work to be "significant". Well, that is the health issue in a nutshell, a very small nutshell. The conservation issue is more difficult. Jim Here is a link that might be useful: Global Assessment of Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon