I bought on eBay some seeds for a shrub called tea olive, or osmanthus fragrans.
I've been growing this shrub for many years. It has a very small cluster-bloom with a marvelous fragrance.
But in all my experience I've never seen seeds. The seeds I got are about the size and shape of small orange seeds, and they are covered with a husk.
Why wouldn't I have seen these seeds? How do I get my plants to produce them?
In message , Borked Pseudo Mailed writes
Other possibilities are that it's self-incompatible (like many apples), or that it's a male plant of a dioecious species, or that the climate isn't suitable to ripen the seeds, or that it's a sterile clone. Like you, I don't know whether any of these applies.
I was curious, so I looked this up and found some info. It seems that it rarely produces fruit/seeds. Propagation is normally done via cuttings. If seeds are used, germination is said to be 2 years. Ugh! It originally came from the Far East (China, S Japan...) and is not native. Only one osmanthus is listed as being native to the US.
If your email address is good and you can accept an attachment, I can email some images with some of the info I found. There wasn't a whole lot and it is a bit dated though...
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