First of all, thank you to everyone who has replied so far...the list is slowly growing but hopefully we will get enough interest to make a request to Garden Web admin. to open a new forum. Please check back to this thread from time to time for updates on the progress toward a CDN Native seed exchange forum.

Valray... the seed/plant exchange will work the same as the other seed/plant exchanges here on Garden Web. You can post seeds that you have available, state what you are looking for and wait for a reply in trade. Once you have a reply, then you make arrangements with the trader via emails on how you want to proceed. In most cases of a straight trade, you exchange snail mail addresses and just send the seeds/plants to the person you are trading with. IF you decide you don't want to do that and would prefer the person just send you a self addressed, stamped envelope, you wait for the envelope to arrive and then pack the seeds in either bubble wrap, tissue or other padding, place in the SASE and return to the sender. I hope that answers your question but if not, post again and I will try to answer more clearly.

Aquaterra... ID'ing plants is not a problem so long as you are confident you have ID'd them correctly in the end before the trade. I am relatively new to Native Species as well (3 years) and am in the learning process. I have numerous Field guides that I refer to, I take digital photos of the plants and make my ID's not only with the field guides but also with the photo and online searches. From now till autumn is a good time to get out and learn to ID a lot of plants/shrubs/trees which are either flowering or fruiting right now. Soon fruits will be ripe so keeping a record of where you spot native flora will help you remember where to go back to, to collect seed. If in doubt you can always post a photo or give a detailed description of the plant and ask for confirmation from a more seasoned collector.

Just a friendly reminder to all... native seeds/fruits/nuts in the wild should be collected in an ecologically responsible manner. A rule of thumb is to only take up to 10% of seeds present either on an individual plant or in a specific area. TAking more than necessary deprives the plant of reproduction possibilities but also robs fauna of a food source particularly during the bitter cold of winter.

Once again, many thanks to all who have responded thus far.

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

I'm interested.
Candy (Quebec)

I'm interested. I'm on S Vancouver Island and can supply erythronium - fawn lily, both white and pink -- but not this year.

add my name to the list of interested parties. I think we should have the same opportunities to trade native seeds as our counterparts in the US.

Signet

Count me into I'm interested

Hello everyone:
... and speaking of native seeds and plants does any one out there have Ontario native cactus (opuntia humifusa) that they would be willing to trade a fan or two?

Gabriela

SUPER! Five new names added to the list. The "yes's" are slowly trickling in but I'll keep checking back to see how we are doing and to answer any questions people might have.

We need to have a decent number of people interested because forums can't sit dormant or they get closed. Because of this we will need enough people that there will be at least one posting a month to keep things running.

If any admins are reading, is there a minimum number of people you need to open a new forum? For now we will just keep collecting names and in the meantime we know who's interested so we can use this list of folks to make swaps until a proper forum can be requested.

Thanks to everyone who's shown an interest! :o)

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

I am interested too. I was looking at the seeds I could collect just yesterday. I spied some gentian and purple asters, to name two.

I am very interested in a Canadian Native List for seeds and/or plants. It is quite frustrating to have so many American ones that you cannot participate in and are anyway so different from our needs
Spike, please please please

mussie

Glad to know you are interested Daylady and Mussie! :o)

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

Also interested. I have access to some Muskoka native species.
sam

I've been thinking about the possibility of our getting a Canadian Native Exchange forum and since names are trickling in slowly I think we should aim for next spring to make the request to Garden Web. My fear is that if we ask now that we won't have enough interested folks to keep the forum active and we'll lose it. If we wait till spring we may have more interested parties and more success with it. In the meantime however, I would encourage all those interested to collect seeds that are ready or coming up ready this fall, so that they can be traded immediately once a forum is open and active. Even if the forum never comes to be, the seeds can then be exchanged right here in the regular garden exchange forum.

I hope that doesn't sound too negative. I am still really hoping for success with this. I just don't want to set ourselves up for failure by asking for it too soon and not having enough interested parties to keep it going.

Any comments?

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

I would also be interested in Native Plant Seed exchange. Although waiting til April may make sense, it does delay growing seed by a year as the majority of native plants require 60 to 120 days of cold, moist stratification to germinate; that means you need to start them in Jan/Feb if you want seedlings for summer 2007.

The North American Native Plant Society (NANPS) has a seed exchange most years. You can donate your seed and then get to buy at a discount (covers cost of mailing).

A word to collecting from the wild: it is illegal to collect seed from plants growing on land you do not own including crown land and especially from Provincial and National Parks. Although the 10% number is often used, I think that collecting 10% of the seed in an area is excessive and 1% is a better number. Never collect seed unless you have identified the plant with certainty, it is also illegal to collect seed from endangered plants.

Some native plant species have hydrophillic seeds that will not germinate if allowed to dry out. These seeds should be planted as soon as collected or stored in a plastic baggie with a small amount of moist vermiculite. You can check with the New England Wildflower Society's seed catalogue ( http://www.newfs.org/nursery.htm) for those seeds which are hydrophillic.

An excellent field guide for identification of plants in Eastern Canada is Newcombs. It has an easy to use key and includes shrubs and vines. When using a field guide, make sure it identifies which plants are native and which are introduced as there are many non native plants growing in the wild.

Here is a link that might be useful: NANPS

Yes, count me in. In the future I will have rattlesnake master, coneflower, monarda fitulosa, baneberry, butterfly weed, joe pye and more.

I vote YES also. I'm not sure what I have to contribute, but am definitely interersted.
Laurel

Thank you Judy for your information, as I was wondering if our posters were offering their own wild & native growing species.
I did not realize how difficult it was to find seed on our Muskoka property. I am now sure seed falls to the ground rather quickly or is eaten by small animals & birds. Also plants do not always produce viable seed. Only the occassional trillium has a large seed pod!
I think I'll leave the natives where they are, for now.
Sharon

Sharon: collecting seed means good timing especially with the woodland species you would have in Muskoka, as they often ripen and "explode" their seed suddenly. I watch my woodland garden carefully and have been know to put a small plastic baggie over a seed head or berry stalk that was getting close. I mentioned the hydrophillic because it would be a shame if someone collected that seed and allowed it to dry out.

The meadow plants are easier to collect as they seem to ripen over a longer period of time so that timing isn't so critical and they usually can take dry storage.

YES! I have been taking photos of all the plants that have been at our place since we moved here 6 years ago, to find out what they are. I do not know which ones are native to the area but would love to find out. I am interested in saving seed and trading..good idea..Martha/zucchini

count me in also!

Thank you to those who have shown an interest since I was here last. The list is growing slowly and I'm not sure if we can make a go of it with less than 30 folks interested but we'll see how it goes over the next 3 to 6 months. Hopefully by the time the spring ephemerals are blooming we can make a decision and put forth a request for our own forum. The worse that can happen is that we just won't have enough people to keep the forum running year round and it will get shut down. But at least we will have given it a shot.

I want to share with you this funny idea I had this past fall. We have a very old and unkempt arboretum near where I live so every week or so I took the dog out there for a run and collected seed from all the natives that were coming ripe. While the dog ran around one day I had this idea of how to disseminate native seed far and wide from just one location (my house) without having to do very much work at all. I've gathered large ziplock freezer bags full of berries from the likes of several native dogwoods, highbush cranberry, nannyberry, chokecherry and so on and placed them in the freezer. Highbush crans are not pallitable to the birds until they have been frozen for some time and the fruit sugars can develop. In the meantime I've purchased lard at the grocery and 9x9" baking pans at the dollar store. Place the baking pan over low heat and melt lard until soft. Remove from heat. Add in berries, nuts, sunflower seed and millet to your liking. Add a sprinkle of white flower to thicken (no need to measure) and spread evenly in the pans. Once hardened in the fridge, the suet can be cut into 4 squares which will be the right size to fit into your suet cages. Those not to be used right away can be frozen and used later in the winter.

No need to sow seeds, the birds will do it for you :o)

Barb

Martha, why not make yourself a little photo-journal with the pics you have taken of plants on your property. You can get quite nice journals at the dollar store. Then when you ID it, you can write in the name and some of the features that help to ID. Later when you see the plant bloom you can write in the date and then watch for the fruit/seed development and write in a rough estimate of when fruit/seeds can be collected each year. I've been busy doing that THIS year because I had no idea when most of our native plants have their seeds ripe for the gathering. Nodding Wild Onion is a tricky one because of the fact that the flower/seedhead nods forward facing the ground. So when the seeds are ripe, the chances of catching them just at the right time is very difficult. For something like that a square of nylon stocking twist tied over the flower is the easiest way to collect without having to check every day or worry about losing the whole lot.

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

Bumping this thread back up in case there are any new CANADIANS on the forum who are interested. If you are interested please let us know by adding your username/name to theh list. Thanks so much and Happy SPRING!

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

count me in please. I have many wildflowers around me..live on a farm.
Have a cottage near Tobermory, lots of wildflowers.
Dont worry..I know with once not to pick.

I am DEFINITELY a go on this one! With growing concerns over water management, it is easier to use native plants to maintain gardens that require less water than some hybrids. Also a good source to help keep alive the original seed base.
Count me in!

Great 2 more to add to our list.

Thank you folks!

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

Hi Knottyceltic,
Thanks for bumping this. You can definitely count me in.

I must admit to being a newbie - both with native plants and Seed Exchanges. I have a lot of questions.

Having our own forum would be great; we could have our own FAQ page. Perhaps we could start a separate thread to start the ball rolling on questions and answers. Might help prod people to join who are fence sitting due to inexperience (like me).

And I don't see why we couldn't incorporate info re: existing initiatives (like NANPS) into this forum.

Thanks for promoting this.

Hi Barb,
I'd be interested.
- Bev

I am interested too! I live on a farm, but never looked at the native flowers on my property of any special interest.. This would make me more aware of them and appreciate them.

Wow! 3 more... that's great! Thank you all for adding your names.

jctl Z5(ON) All great ideas you have there. Would you be kind enough to start a FAQ then? You could start it in the "Native Plants" section and then once the data is compiled we can, as you said, already have information ready if/when we get our own forum. I'm sure the first question frequently asked is "what is native"? and we've had discussions on this already so if we can dig up the old threads, we can add quotes from them to the FAQ because there are MANY ideas about "what is native" and perhaps all should be included in the answer part of that question. We could even give credit to the quoter if we can find those old threads. So if you want to take the initiative on this one... writing up the original post, asking for FAQ questions for a CANADIAN NATIVE PLANT GARDENING forum and perhaps placing a link to this page for reference and as another means of gathering interest, that would be great.

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

Hi Barb
I would be interested in a Canadian Native Exchange forum; I live on fifty acres of mixed woodland and usually collect a few seeds each year from plants such as trillium, blue bead lily, bunchberry, winterberry, etc to offer on my regular trade list.

Thank you for your interest PEI Stewart! :o)

FYI to everyone who's posted interest. I have finally posted a request at the Suggestions Forum to see if we can get this ball rolling and hopefully if it comes to fruition, the visiting members to the forum will just naturally grow once it's listed on the Main "CANADIAN FORUMS" page.

If you wish to add any comments to the request, you can find the thread here:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/suggest/msg0323350514033.html

Everyone keep your collective fingers crossed ;o) :o)

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

I'm interested as well!

Hello,

I'm interested in a Canadian native plant forum as well. It would be nice to talk to other Canadians about our native plants and how to plant them. I just saw my first Jack In The Pulpit this past weekend and now I'm hooked.

Thanks!

Here is a link that might be useful: I Wet My Plants blog

Harlgr8dane, glad to have you aboard. You'll be happy to know as well that the baneberry seeds you gave me two years ago are now large plants producing seeds of their own. :o)

anijunga, glad to have you aboard too. I've made the proposal to Garden Web and now am just awaiting a reply.

Barb/knottyceltic

Hi, I am interested in a Canadian native plant exchange forum as well.

Hey Hippiemom...glad to have you join in the interest of Canadian native seed/plant trading. I dunno if you've read though the thread but I've placed a request to the garden web administration but haven't heard back from them as yet. The request is in the "Suggestions" forum, I keep bumping it up but still no reply as yet.

Thanks for your interest.

Barb/aka Knottyceltic.

Hey Hippiemom, Welcome to the GardenWeb forums :^D

You wouldn't happen to be the very generous Lady that gave my wife and I a Cup Plant the other day would you?

-Joe

I am also very interested in Canadian Native Plants. I have a small selection of Saskatchewan Natives in my garden. Here is a good link for ID'ing Sask natives.

Here is a link that might be useful: Saskatchewan Native Plants

I'd be interested as well.

Curious to know .....after almost 1 year since the first mention of people wanting a separate forum for Canadian native seeds exchanges was made , and 1 1/2 years of asking and soliciting interest ...does anyone really think this forum is ever going to materialize. I sincerely have my doubts

Signet

Well Signet, I'm a stubborn person. I keep going back to the suggestions site and bumping my posting back and and eventually someone will either wipe it off the board or answer. I don't know of any other way to get a new forum established except through the suggestions forum so if anyone has any insights I'd be happy to try something new. In the mean time, I can "stay the course" as baby Bush likes to say ;o) Don't lose faith Signet (or anyone else) this native gardening is still rather a new idea to a lot of people so I'm sure if Garden Web Admins are reading or thinking about our request, they likely are wondering how much interest we will actually generate or if it will be a waste of their bandwidth. At any rate, don't worry...

Barb aka knottyceltic
southern Ontario, CANADA

Hello all, I'm new here and havn't read all yet. Do any of you have or can get Pure Red Mulberry Tree seed. I'm a novice tree grower but i collect the seeds better than I grow them for the moment.

Hi all, I have a bunch of seeds that I'd like to trade for other interesting native plants to fill out my 1st year garden. Not sure if it's kosher but setting up a wiki or some other type of forum wouldn't be hard at all and I'd be glad to get one going. All in the name of sharing garden goodness.

Hi Arthur61 and welcome to our little thread. As you seem to know from your request, native red mulberry has been at risk for some time now due to the introduction of the Asian white mulberry (for those who aren't aware, the Chinese White mulberry was introduced here and later found to be able to hybridize with our native red mulberry which in turn depletes the pure red mulberry gene pool rendering it "at risk". Currently in southern Ontario I believe the statistics are somewhere about the range of 50% of red mulberry gene pools are now mixed with the Chinese White mulberry and 50% have not yet been mixed. Once they are mixed you can never get the pure red mulberry back so that is why it is such a dangerous issue as we may eventually lose our native red mulberry completely to natural hybridization.

Green Cannuck, welcome also! :o) Please go ahead and form a group if you have the time. Let us know how things go (through this thread please).

Barb aka knottyceltic
southern Ontario, CANADA

Thank you for responding Barb.Government people I've been in contact with seem to want to protect the Rd Mulberry's habitat and let it recover naturally, although I believe A much more aggressive planting program is needed. However I am not the expert in the field. I have some native columbine seed at the moment, and will possibly later on have some Cardinal Flower and Rough Blazing Star.

Art61, I'd definitely be interested in your cardinal flower seed if you find you have any extra once you've filled your own needs. I let all my native columbines self seed and there is already a new patch of tiny babies starting despite the horrid drought we'd had for about a month.

IMHO, protection of the red mulberry is only one facet of what needs to be done. You can plant as many pure red mulberries as you want but if the gene pool is disturbed by the continued importation and planting of the white mulberry, ALL planted or natural red mulberries will continue to be at risk. We have an old, very unkempt arboretum here in Woodstock and it has a mature white mulberry and I'm going to firmly request that it's time to take it down. It can be replaced with something of a more native nature, even if it's not native to our general area, at least it could be native to Canada or Canada and the north-east of USA. It's a danger to our native stocks and serves little purpose in the arboretum which is not the attraction that it should be in our booming little town. Now it is down to finding the time to write the appropriate persons about taking down the tree and see what comes of it.

Good luck in your search for your mulberries. I'll let you know if I find any unaffected red mulberries (not likely since there are so few pristine red mulberry left in the whole of the country...they say as low as 80 trees left in canada) in my neck of the woods and collect some seed for you.

Here's an eye opening article from the University of Guelph that shows the state of the Red Mulberry and how the white mulberry needs to be eradicated in order for the red to rebound. IMHO with such a small genepool as only 80 specimens, the species may already be doomed as small gene pools almost always mean death to a species as they are not able to survive disease and infestations as those in cases of diverse genepools. At any rate, here's the article:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/research/news/articles/1998/preserving_legendary_mulberry.shtml

Barb
southern Ontario, CANADA

I have a group started up for trading and growing native and rare plants in Canada. If you are interested email me.

grdebruyne@sasktel.net

This problem with invasives started long ago. I think it has a lot to do with people not wanting "Messy" trees on their property. Starting back in the sixties and before that the push was to breed and find species of trees that didn't fruit and had minimal yard waste. The problem is attitudinal. Mind sets have to change too otherwise this is all going to be an uphill battle.

Thankx Barb. I did answer back right after you sent your last message but for some reason it didn't send. Red Mulberry is probably finished fruiting by now( the seeds are in the fruit),and my cardinal flower is still in full bloom but I will do my best to get you some seed(dont even know what they look like).Sorry for the delay.

Hey! Natives are wonderful, and a part of our heritage . Having a place to trade/obtain these seeds is a fabulous idea!