In the USA sourcing living Erythroxylum coca is most difficult. Not that I would admit to ever having looked into it. But to this day I have not seen any being sold anywhere in the USA.
Yes, I find Sassafras albidum horticulturally difficult. I suspect among other things, it requires a fairly acidic soils. It is used by Ag Extension agents when scouting properties acceptable for blueberry farming. If there is Sassafras in the field, chances are good that the soil is acidic enough for blueberries. At least in southwest Michigan it works out that way. In horticulture, I would definitely engineer a more acidic than what I use for azalea soil.
Getting E coca was tricky for me too. Plants go for 80 euros and up and seeds are a rare and expensive commodity.
But I managed to get some seeds from both Indonesia (where the Dutch had their cocaine imperium) as well as Bolivia.
They're hard to keep to say the least. They respond both like ficus as well as junipers, sometimes super fast and with clear signs of what they want, sometimes they just stop doing everything for a year and slumber.
Germination chances drop with a whopping 90% just a few days after the berries are picked.
I have a couple over 8 years old and a few offsprings. They need to be hand pollinated and have serious inbreeding depressions.
I've been one of the few to hybridize coca with novo, but most seeds abort themselves. The hybrid vigor only lasts for a couple of months.
Coca doesn't root from air/ground layer or cuttings and laboratory techniques (I've tried over 200 medium compositions and hormone concentrations) don't work either.
Truly a difficult species, all the way. There are two or three plant families that I really can't figure out, not even with literature and practical help from technicians and professors. Coca is at the top of that list. It just doesn't follow a plantlike logic and I don't know why. Every few years I synchronize their flowering and paint myself a bunch of berries. I could put you on the waiting list if you'd like.
As far as I know, sassafras likes both dry soils as well as acidic soils, which is kind of unique in the sense that most real acidic soils are rarely free draining. I own two of them, roughly 7-9 years old. But they never have gotten any bigger than a pencil, and as thick as the lead in a pencil.
If they leaf out this spring, I'll get some more peat soil and see if I can mix something up. Maybe add some sulfuric acid soaked bark to get the pH down.
Any advice about sassafras is most welcome. My blueberries do great year after year!
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