Avocado trade list (ISO seeds or scions)

[drymifolia]

Greetings! I'm in search of either seeds or scions of any Mexican-race avocados (named cultivars or unnamed trees with anise scented leaves). I can trade scions of varieties I already have or pay for them, your choice.

I want seeds of any variety, including ones I already have, but obviously only scionwood from other ones. I would want the scions starting in late February or March, when my greenhouse trees start waking up, but that is flexible and I can bench graft indoors in a pinch if you need to send sooner.

Here's what I have currently, the ones that are bold are large enough to cut this winter or early next spring, the rest are recent grafts or have been cut a lot already and can't be cut until later next year at the earliest:

Aravaipa

Brazos Belle

Duke (from the Oroville train station)

Del Rio

Ganter

Jade (a backyard tree from Gainesville, FL)

Joey

Linh (backyard tree from northern CA)

Long South Gate (a backyard tree from Los Angeles area)

Mayo

Northrop/Northrup

"Not Mexicola" (from an Etsy seller who collected scions from a tree in a public park in CA with fruit similar to Mexicola)

Poncho

Rincon Valley (street tree near Santa Rosa, might be Mexicola)

Royal-Wright

Stewart

Teague

Walter Hole

[drymifolia]

I've had two people reach out to me recently asking for scions based on this post, so I figured I should post an update since I'm not currently offering any scions for trade, let alone for sale. Due to the rapid growth of membership in the local/bioregional project that I'm organizing here in the Cascadian lowlands, there is no longer any extra material to share beyond the project.

If someone has located an exceptionally hardy tree, I can probably make an exception and spare some cuttings in order to trade so we can add that to our gene pool in the project, but otherwise there is nothing extra to spare at this time. Perhaps in future years that will change again, so anyone finding this post years from now should feel free to reach out and ask again.

For anyone who's in this region, you're welcome to join the project on our website, but people joining now may not get their first trees until the spring 2025 distribution, as we already have more members seeking trees than available trees for 2024.

[D-Grower]

It seems I'm outside your project zone by a huge distance but I'd be interested in helping develop more cold hardy variety. Not as much as in propagation of existing cultivars but in the breeding of new varieties. My current goal is to amass as many cold tolerate types as possible and cross pollinate them and grow out the seeds and test for cold hardiness and fruit quality. It's a long term endeavor no doubts. I intend to breed more southern apple varieties too.

As far as zone maps go I'm considered 9A but in the last 6 years I've had winter lows as far down as 15F. That's a solid 8B on some of our winter seasons. Cold wise I think I should qualify for your project. Obviously I wouldn't be able to come get trees but we could share seeds and scions. I don't see fantastic in your list but it may also be under one of the other names. If you need scions for that variety I can send some whenever but figure early spring is best. I can also get brogdon scions too. Also have a Stewart seedling growing I could send scions from though it hasn't fruited yet. Only 3 or so years old. Have a few Wilma seedlings as well but are too young to cut from yet. If I'm not mistaken Wilma is Brazos Belle under another name. Could be wrong however these are seedlings anyways and not clones. There's a member here that once sent me cold hardy scions but cannot remember whom for sure but pretty sure their member name is Taylor something. From Arizona that I know for sure. I did get some successful grafts but unfortunately I moved the trees from up under the edge of my porch into full sun and burnt the leaves badly and then they couldn't recover. So success at first but then a complete fail from my bad. Stuff happens I guess.

[drymifolia]

It seems I'm outside your project zone by a huge distance but I'd be interested in helping develop more cold hardy variety. Not as much as in propagation of existing cultivars but in the breeding of new varieties. My current goal is to amass as many cold tolerate types as possible and cross pollinate them and grow out the seeds and test for cold hardiness and fruit quality. It's a long term endeavor no doubts. I intend to breed more southern apple varieties too.

That sounds very similar to my goals with this project! The main difference is you have a better chance of success because your cold weather is usually shortlived, with warm periods after to allow the trees to recover, while we typically don't get above the 40s at all for at least 2 straight months. There are weeks in the middle of winter where our RECORD HIGH is in the low 50s! Our winter lows most nights are right around freezing, plus or minus a few degrees, and almost every winter it gets below 25° on at least a few nights. A few times per decade it goes down to mid-teens, but when that does happen it's usually below freezing for a few straight days (highs below freezing too). So it's pretty tough for an avocado to thrive here, but by USDA growing zone math, we've just moved from zone 8b to 9a.

I'd be happy to talk about doing scion swaps in future years, but probably won't have spare seeds any time soon, since my greenhouse trees are just now reaching a size where I hope they'll start producing next season, and they will be unlikely to produce more seeds than the project needs to keep up with demand, since I'm expecting most of the seedlings I'm distributing to die on all but the mildest winters.

This year someone in Gainesville gifted us about 120 seeds, and I bought another 30 from Craig Hepworth, so I'm currently starting about 150 seeds for 2025. I also have about 40 or 50 trees from last year that will be ready to distribute to members this coming spring, assuming minimal losses from freeze damage and winter root rot (a common problem for potted avocados in our rainy, cool climate, but rarely fatal).

For an up-to-date list of current grafted varieties in the project, you can check here:

https://www.drymifolia.org/trees.php?subset=grafts

I did order Fantastic again this winter from Fruitwood, after my graft last year failed, so I'm hoping that will be back in the project soon. You can click on the cards for each variety to see more information about them.

I assume that at some point I'll get locked out of this TFF account, just like happened to my previous account, but you can always reach me via email using the contact page on that website above if you want to see about doing scion swaps in future years.