And Roselle! I'll be growing several plants of Roselles this year. Hibiscus heaven, maybe!

Bon mine were Hyacinth seed not hibiscus

I get them mixed up all the time

Oh my gollies. You're right!

Lol Bon I do the same thing. My sister keeps me straight and if I forget I go back to jack in the beanstalk beans

Now i cannot find the packet. These are the bean vines, right? I have the purple.

Bon, When you have the following hibiscus species, I believe they all are capable of crossing with one another: Hibiscus moscheutos, H. coccineus, H. palustris, H. laevis. and H. militaris.

I know that H. moscheutos and H. coccineus can cross because I got a volunteer one year (not from saved seed, obviously, but just from seed the parent plant dropped on the ground) that was a combination of the two. My H. moscheutos was a swamp mallow with flowers that had white petals with a red eye, and my H. coccineus was solid red. The volunteer plant had solid pink flowers but also with a slightly dark pink, not red, eye. Unfortunately its seed appeared sterile as none of the ones I saved germinated at all. A few years later we got an identical pink-flowered volunteer but its seed also were sterile.

I still have the red hibiscus that is H. coccineus but no longer have the swamp mallow (too many dry years with no swampy conditons must have been more than it could take), and the pink-flowered and other red-flowered ones I have are Luna, so I think they are H. moscheutos too.

Roselle is awesome and makes gigantic plants. I space mine 5 to 8 feet apart and grow shorter things like sweet potatoes, ornamental sweet potatoes, peppers (they like the shade) or southern peas in the open space between them. I have to stake my roselles after they are a couple of feet tall, or once they hit 4' of 5' feet, they start falling over from the weight of all the limbs.

Dawn

Okay. I gotta take it easy with these plants and be diligent for seed-saving.

When you save seed of hibiscus, watch the blooms carefully. There's some sort of tiny little brown bug, about one-third to one-fourth the size of a lady bug, that likes to eat the blooms as they are turning brown. Once the flowers go to seed, those same little evil brown bugs start eating the seeds while they're still green, and then by the time the seeds are brown and could be harvested, they've been damaged/destroyed by the evil little brown bugs.

Thank you. Will bags made of cheesecloth work okay? I've been wondering what type of material I'll be using for saving seeds.

Yes, I think so. I use the little organza bags they sell on the wedding aisle at Walmart--you know, they are meant for mints or rice or something and come in different sizes. They have little drawstrings that are easy to pull tight around the stem to keep out bugs. I reuse them all the time, so one package of 10 has lasted me about 10 years.