What's so special about cotton seeds?

Factual Questions
1

My Mom wanted to grow a couple of cotton plants in her garden NY State. When she couldn’t find seeds for sale anywhere, I said “No problem, it’ll be EASY on the Web!” Well, then it gets mysterious. You would think that every garden or farm store in the country would stock them, but no. I found that white cotton seeds are indeed nearly impossible to buy. My question is, why? Are they poisonous, dangerous, government-strategic, illegal, or
what? Are we just terrified of those damn weevils?

-R

2

Searched Yahoo! for “growing cotton” and found this:

http://www.farminfo.org/othercrops/cotton.htm

3

Sorry, I see now that I missed your actual question. My mistake.

4

you could try searching by the latin name (Gossypium hirsutum).

If you have absolutely no luck, why not grow Okra - the plant is not dissimilar and you get to eat the pods.

5

http://www.nativeseeds.org/v1/cat.php?catID=19

[quote]
Cotton seeds can only be shipped to AZ, NM, TX and OK addresses…

[quote]
This restriction probably has to do with laws for controlling agricultural pest organisms. However they do sell peruvian brown cottonseeds.
You might also try your local feedstore, as cotton seeds are a component in some cattle feeds. http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vetext/INF-DA/INF-DA_GOSSYPOL.HTML

6

They just started preparing the field in back of my house, this morning. It will be a while before they plant the seeds. If you don’t find a supplier, let me know and I’ll try and get you a few seeds. Cotton needs full sun and the hotter the better.

7

Here is one place that sells it but they say that they can only ship to a handful of states. Not sure what the deal is:

http://www.nativeseeds.org/v1/cat.php?catID=19