I'm not sure how many plants and seeds I have bought through the internet over the years but one thing that I always avoided was buying anything from outside the continental US. Even on popular sites like eBay, I would often get shafted by either the seller or us customs when trying to get something as harmless as desert rose seeds, but my search for a certain hard to find variety of plant was leading me nowhere through the usual channels. I was considering posting wanted adds on a few forums and was prepared to send money to complete strangers who merely claimed that they would send me the desired seeds in return with no guarantee. That's how difficult it is to get these seeds and how far I was willing to go, then I stumbled across dbotany.com, I inspected the site and saw the amount of time and effort that went into making the site and how many original pictures were on the site, that couldn't be found anywhere else with google reverse image search. (These are some basic steps to weed out scam sites from sites that actually sell a real product). I knew as far as the seller was concerned this was my best shot at getting these hard to find seeds. I decided to buy two of the exotic species available for sale at the time because I wanted to take an all or nothing approach with shipping and customs, that and these sites never seem to stay up long so I wanted to get what I could while I could; even though Dbotany has been online for quite a few years. (another good indicator for website legitimacy) My seeds were delivered via DHL Express mail in a package that had about 50 layers of tape and paper. (took forever to open) I noticed a plant name labeled on the final innermost layer and found it quite amusing. And inside that were two zip-lock baggies filled with sphagnum moss. I dumped the moss out on a plate and started sifting and found more than the advertised amount of seeds (got a few extra).

I immediately planted the seeds in marked pots in a mixture of 70% peat moss 20% gardening soil 10% perlite (I use that mixture for all acid loving plants) I just checked today and 18 of my favorite variety of the seeds have poked above the soil and 2 of them have already popped the seed coat off their leaves and produced their first set of true leaves.

The other variety of seeds that I got are a lot slower to sprout, but I dug up one of the seeds and saw a root poking out so I just need to wait longer for them.

TLDR; I got my seeds and they have already sprouted. I suspect Thomas F. To be a shill paid to decrease the credibility of any of the few websites like dbotany that are still available.