You may also be in a unique position to try some really obscure recipes down the road that would otherwise be impossible. While I have never actually seen one, I understand from some of my books on food that there are some dishes in regional French, Spanish and other Mediterranean cookery that require the use of bay berries, as in berries from an actual bay* (as opposed to bayberries the waxy little things that people use to make candles) . Since I do not think I have EVER seen bay fruit being sold in a spice catalog, I sort of assume that the only way to make these dishes is to have a bay tree that is big enough and old enough to be reproducing. When and if it does, you will probably have a lot of cooking fun (I'm almost tempted to ask that when that day comes someone be kind enough to send ME (who lives too far north to have a bay laurel of sufficient size and age) a few berries to play around with. But I rather suspect that, being a true laurel, the fruit of the bay is probably too oily to keep long enough for mailing by any conventional methods without going rancid on the way. I imagine it's similar to the situation with spicebrush berries (another member of the laurel family); you really need to freeze the berries if you want to keep them long term.)
*though having a central pit (like most laurels) botanically, such fruits would be a drupe, not a berry.
