Congratulations and kudos!! I do believe you may be the first person to successfully harvest/sow/grow D. spectabilis from seed. I checked my D. spectabilis 'Alba' for seedpods last year but was unsuccessful when looking for any that were ripe. Did you harvest the seedpods right when they fell from the plant stems or while they were still attached & green? Do please describe your strategy so that others may attempt to learn from your success.

Subk3........ You say you are new to roses and are frustrated because you cannot find local advise and just have to go for it and are afraid of failure.... we have ALL been there. That's part of being new to roses or even new to gardening. I have always considered every rose I plant to be an experiment. Some of them make it and thrive and others, even tho' I have researched them, just don't quite make it. You can see a common thread in the posts on this forum where people are fine tuning the roses they plant because they have discovered that the roses they thought would succeed in their gardens just don't quite make it, even tho' they've researched, followed all the rules for planting good roses, etc. SandandSun said, "Great gardens are the result of skilled gardeners." ... but he forgot to say that becoming a skilled gardener is the process of finding out what doesn't work in your garden and what does work. In other words, looking at both your failures and successes. It takes time. As far as I know, there are no shortcuts. Jeri's husband's comment that it is the journey of creating a garden that is the most important part of gardening, which I think is probably most important information about gardening any of us can learn. If you look at gardening this way, even tho' you may mistakes, you still have the joy that comes with gardening. Jackie's post about patience is one of the most important lessons a garden teaches us. Sometimes, the best fix for a problem in the garden is to just wait and allow the plants to mature. Young plants often outgrow their problems. In my garden, it takes at least four years for a rose to come into its own... I have lousy soil and have to keep working at it. As you read those posts, underneath the topic, you'll see we are learning from the best teacher out there ... the roses themselves ! When a rose is not thriving, we are looking for the cause. Sometimes it's the soil, or that we have pushed the zones for a rose and it just can't handle the climate, poor drainage, not enough sun or any other of a number of variables. You are frustrated because others near you don't grow ogrs and cannot help you as you move through this beginning stage. In my experience, most of the gardeners I had hoped to learn from when I joined our local Garden Club are so busy in their own gardens, they have little time to help me, but they are good people, like the people here, and I learn a little from them as time goes by, but for the most part I am on my own. I live in a very rural area and as I walk through town, I've seen people outside gardening and asked them how they knew what to plant and where to plant it. The answer is often, "Oh, I didn't know. I just tried it and it worked. Some plants live and some plants die." You will find roses that work for you, and you'll remove some that just don't make you happy even after you have given them the test of time in your garden. Your vision for your garden will change over time. Gardening with roses, and in general, is a process. Smiles, Lyn

Gayle, Isn't it amazing how seeds (especially from native plants) prefer to sprout at their own pace, and not "on demand" as we would wish! I am glad you got some possumhaw hollies to sprout. I bet your ones that are on the edge of the woods will eventually sprout. We have native possumhaws scattered here and there around the property....three or four big clumps of them in what I consider the more civilized "yard" part of our property. Some years lots of little possumhaws sprout underneath the established ones, and some years none sprout at all. I just mow over the sprouts a couple of times and that pretty much wipes them out. I just noticed this week that the cedar waxwings are here, sitting in the possumhaws where they will, undoubtedly, feast on the berries until they can't see straight. Eventually they will strip all the berries and then continue on their journey north. I love cedar waxwings but we only see them here in large numbers as they migrate in late winter. So, now that you have little hollies sprouting, do you have a location in mind where you intend to plant them? Dawn

Since you are in z5 I am guessing that this is hibiscus syriacus. Remove the flower bud, because this takes energy away from rooting. Water is a good way to preserve cuttings until you are ready (I only propagate roses in water) to place them in soil. Dip the cutting in rooting hormone and place in a well-draining potting mix (you can buy "cactus mix", this works well, but I make my own) allow the soil to dry between watering, and eventually you will have a rooted plant. You can also see my named selection of hibiscus syriacus here (just click the cultivar name under "hibiscus syriacus"): https://sites.google.com/site/cccultivar/caldwellhg