Since last Saturday, when the story was first published, the response in Australia has been overwhelming. There have also been requests from or on behalf of victim families in the Netherlands, Malaysia and Britain, nations that represent the bulk of the nearly-300 passengers and crew who died when the Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July.

The Dutch ambassador to Canberra, Annemieke Ruigrok, advised by email that she had forwarded the story to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to be shared with the families of almost 200 Dutch victims of the crash.

Offering the embassy's assistance in a hoped-for widening of the circle of seed distribution, she then alluded to a further widening: "[The Foreign Ministry] will also inform embassies of other countries who had nationals on the MH17 flight.

She signed off: "I am, of course, not sure how many of them will take up your offer . . . Thank you for your compassion and your kindness."

But one of the 150 or so emails that flooded in, from a senior Australian quarantine official, was more daunting.

It seems that what might have been a simple parcelling and mailing operation to get the nearly 1.5kg of seed distributed and possibly planted in gardens across Australia this summer, is becoming a vastly more complex and less certain venture.

The quaratine official, Nicola Hinder, who is assistant secretary for pathway compliance at the Federal Department of Agriculture, which regulates the importation of plants and animals to Australia, could not have been more supportive.

In her email and a subsequent phone conversation, Hinder enthusiastically undertook to have her department do all that it could to help us get the seeds to victims' families and friends in Australia – but within the strict confines of the quarantine system.

Stating that all fees would be waived, she offered to have an official at the Australian Embassy in Washington collect the seeds from my home and for them to be dispatched to Australia to be processed by quarantine officals.

"I am touched by your heartfelt and generous offer to post seeds you gathered in Ukraine to families in Australia. I would like to work with you to see what can be arranged to facilitate this," she wrote.

Hinder then set out a complex process by which the seeds must be examined for pests and diseases before being sown at a quarantine station to produce another "clean" generation of the same seeds, which could then be distributed.

First, however, the viability of the seeds would be established – it seems that there is a narrow window in which sunflower seeds should be harvested and it remains to be seen how accurately Kate Geraghty and I timed our dawn raid on the field next to Rassypnoe, known as the "cockpit village".

"If the seeds are viable," Hinder wrote, "they will go to a Post Entry Quarantine station to be grown out and tested to determine the presence of any pests and diseases of quarantine concern.  If no issues of concern are identified, the seeds will be re-harvested [for you] to send them to the families."

Hinder said that, unless properly managed, seeds sent from abroad could pose a serious biosecurity risk to Australia. "Seeds of sunflowers from the Ukraine are not allowed to be posted to and planted in Australia because of the risk they could carry diseases or pests that could devastate our environment or agriculture. Until seeds are tested we cannot tell whether they pose a risk of not."

While speculating on the possibility of the seeds failing to clear the quarantine hurdles, she resourcefully came up with a construct by which the seeds might still be delivered to the families and friends - set them in resin.

Hmmm. Our objective was for the families to have those beautiful, open-faced flowers nodding at them from their gardens. This idea of a paper-weight doesn't have quite the same appeal.

And so we wait to hear back from Hinder and her colleagues.