This is awesome. Are we best friends now? I have a background in plant tissue culture, especially micropropagation of woody species. I don't do that professionally anymore, mostly because I have other skills that the job market likes better. However, I always have a propagation experiment of some kind going.

I think you are doing great work and your vision is very clear-eyed. Even from a grubby capitalist perspective, tree nurseries are a good future-proof business because climate changes are going to necessitate a lot of re-planting. It's that kind of local knowledge you are making that if more widespread will help us develop the resilience to maybe, just maybe, get through the next couple of centuries.

This is so interesting! When I was growing up we had a small orchard in our backyard with a wide variety of apples, plums, pears, etc. We used to do something similar and give out cuttings to anyone who asked so there's clones of those trees all over the area as far as 3-ish hours away that I know of. When us kids grew up my parents sold the house but my Dad took cuttings from all the different apple trees and spliced them onto a root stock at the new house to make hybrids with all the varieties from our old house. Unfortunately my parents both passed and before my partner and I were able to move back to the family home someone who was helping us out with the yard work ran over the hybrid-apple tree with the riding lawn mower 😑 so its no longer with us either.