I e-mailed one of the nurseries selling these seedlings as named cultivars, and their reply was that loquats do come true to type from seeds, despite other sources saying they don't. I don't understand why they aren't selling real, grafted or layered material instead.

Try rollingrivernursery.com for true to type loquat. Seedlings grow very well but are'nt true to type and the fruits revert to huge pits.

I agree, I have noticed the same thing in looking for loquats as well. I would just keep googling and looking until you find a grafted variety. I did, and now have two of them but it took a lot of "digging" (no pun intended!). I look forward to tasting the fruit. One thing I ran across in my loquat research is that in general the white fleshed varieties do well along cooler California costal type areas while the darker orange flesh types do better in the hotter inland or hot gulf coast climate. I am in South Texas so I have planted Big Jim and Early Red.

I picked a few loquat (growing wild, but of good quality)from a park and planted the seeds. 5 years later the tree produced fruits that were as good as the parents. It's just my experience, but I guess if the tree is self fruitful and if it's not a hybrid, then why should the seed not produce the same plant as the parent?