In need of horticulturist advice

[mister nacho]

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[Mr. Grim]

I had this problem once too. Nothing a little penicillin won't cure.

[Sheriff Bannerman]

All I know is the Dorothy Parker quote: You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Is it a flowering crab-apple? Crab apples grow readily from seeds, and I can look up the optimum conditions to sprout the seeds if you like. (they need to be chilled for a while after harvest and before sprouting, without drying out and without molding or being eaten. Simply dropping them in the ground in the fall solves all of these except the "not eaten" bit.) HOWEVER, apples do grow true from seeds. That is, apple trees have a lot of genetic variation, and the offspring tend to be different from the parents. Domestic eating apples are all grown by cloning known tasty trees.

The apples vary more than the blooms, though, and all crab apples are pretty in the spring, so your odds of getting a nice ornamental from a seeed aren't bad. Around here, we have dozens of wild crabs in the woody patches between properties (they sprouted where a bird dropped a seed, and no one pulled the seedling out.) and they are all attractive in the spring. Also, if you plant a seedling, it is easy to graft a branch of the parent tree onto it, creating your own clone.

[Maine-iac]

Try contacting the County Extension Service. They know a lot about this sort of thing. (Often located at your state university.)

[sliced bread]

This post is just BEGGING for a parody thread!