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Hi all,
Just trying to get the word out about the "Botanical Wonders" rhizomes at Lowes/ Home Depot. It is my understanding they are wild collected, seeing as how the company states they are "nursery grown". Trillium, trout lily's, maiden hair ferns, and many other woodland plants are being sold in little packages for almost nothing (around 2.00 dollars). Anyone who knows a thing about Trillium/ slow growing woodland plants would quickly realize no nursery propagated trillium would ever be sold "bare root". Please make sure the plants you buy are Nursery Propagated and NOT nursery grown. I did see the little cube of death pitcher plants/ VFT's etc. in the Lowes too. I think these are tissue cultured, although not entirely sure (Judith Hindle and Daina's delight were present). Seeing the rhizomes made me stop and think about if the VFT's and certain sarracenia (rubra and purpurea) are also taken from the wild . Can anyone shed light on the matter? So spread the word if you can about the rhizomes, and please don't buy wild collected plants. If you live in the New England area, check out the New England Wild Flower Society, a non-profit organization aimed at Native Plant conservation (this includes sarracenia, drosera, pinguicula, and darlingtonia). Thanks for reading!
 
im pretty sure these plants by these companies are tissue cultured/cloned and not wild taken...they care nothing about the plants they sell out because they can quickly propogate more and just sell them off too, they count on peoples ignorance to think its their own fault for the plant dying and not the nursery/company...
 
SirKristoff are you talking about the carnivorous plants being tissue cultured or woodland plants....spring ephemerals like trillium, and bloodroot are never sold bare root, let alone $ 2.00-3.00. Also the difference between nursery PROPAGATED vs. nursery GROWN is much different. Nursery Grown plants as stated on "Botanical Wonders" packaging are dug up from the wild and placed in a greenhouse/ nursery and labeled as nursery grown. Nursery Propagated are plants propagated by the nursery from seed or other means. Other than Trillium grandiflorum 'floro plenum' I know of no tissue culture techniques or other ways to mass produce trillium as they do not produce seed and grow very slowly via rhizome (7 + years to reach maturity)...If you are talking about the CP's than yes, I would agree they are most likely from tissue culture, but certainly not the woodland spring ephemerals.
 
What proof do you have that they still continue to do that?
How does nursery grown pertain to anything involving wild collecting/poaching?
If the people have been busted for it before, wouldnt they be monitored? If so, then they would be caught again i imagine.
Again, i have no idea about the trillium or any of those, but Tissue Culture and division of purps, rubra, and VFT is not at all difficult.
 
SirKristoff,

As you said about Sarracenia and VFT's, certain plants (cacuts, succulents, coleus, etc.) are easy to mass produce and sell cheaply. So I think we have a consensus that the death cube CP's are indeed tissue cultured plants (and from a different source). Pertaining to nurseries labeling plants as "Nursery Grown" vs "Nursery propagated", anyone in the plant retail business will tell you the difference between the 2, I am sure you know plenty of people in plant retail. My boss, Mr. Lafluer (Botanic Director for NE Wild Flower Society) did a little segment for trillium, where he outlines the difference. http://www.newfs.org/publications-and-media/video/learning-about-trillium-2.html/

If you want more information on nursery grown vs nursery propagated than read Bill Cullina's book "Wildflowers". He explains the difference between the two on page 12. Low price, bare root, and bulk of supply (consider the number of Lowes across the US selling these products) are indicators woodland plants have been taken from the wild.
If that isnt enough consider the fact that Trillium take 7 + years to mature and grow very slowly, thus hard to mass produce. Would reputable nurseries really take the time and resources to grow out thousands of trillium only to see them priced at 2-3 dollars? The same pretains to other difficult slow growing woodland plants such as bloodroot, hepatica, ginger, etc. Woudn't it be easier to dig up thousands of plants and sell them to keep up with demand, as opposed to devoting time and resources to legit propagation methods? So if you still doubt that "Botanical Wonders" is still taking plants from the wild, check out the rhizome package and look for spring 2010. Ask the manager from the Lowes plant area where the "Botanical Wonders" rhizomes came from and propagation method used. I will bet they don't have a clue. In addition, my Boss and plant retail coordinator at NE Wild Flower Society used to manage the plant sales for a Home Depot. She told me these large box stores don't care where/how the plants come into the stores, they are mainly concerned with selling them / keeping them alive long enough that people buy them. Where is the proof the woodland rhizomes are in fact propagated legitimately? It would seem there is every indication they are taken from the wild.
 
We have wild "Easter Lily" up here and a ton of them for sale, they are that cheap around here typically if its a dormant bulb. if its a live growing, potted plant, they are only 5-7$ for a smaller one....and they divide like mad, atleast up here they do.
 
I have heard a bit about Trillium and I agree that its a weird price, besides I think they need false honey ants to plant their seeds. (or so I have been told)
 
I have never seen Trilliums or other bulb plants sold as anything other than as bulbs in bag of dry peat or as a bare bulb in a box stating what the bulbs are.

I do not believe the Trilliums I've boughten bagged or from a bulk box at my aunts greenhouse are even propagated in the US. IIRC mine stated "propagated in holland" along with all the other exotic bulbs I've boughten for outside planters.

If you see an online auction showing a mound of bulbs on a table no packaging and silly cheap prices then questions can sometimes arise. I see a lot of native slipper orchids that state "dug this year". 2 blooming size C. aculae for $9 and so on. However, a global corporation like Holland Bulbs or whomever, running essentially a booming international trade in protected woodland species would be caught out quite quickly these days.

Not to mention they'd have no future product after a year of two of this considering how many outlets they service. There simply aren't that many wild stands of Trilliums or other bulb plants to sustain such a thing.
 
Maybe I've not been looking close enough but I don't recall seeing "nursery propagated" on labels.
I haven't seen you post that I recall either. Could this be a competitive sabotage or somesuch?
It is just odd all together, doesn't seem to add up. Course, I'm prolly wrong, but still my B.S. meter is sounding off again.

Who is the company in question and have you contacted them and/or the authorities?
Many CP's are a pain to mature, hence they are TC'd and it would be completely analogous to TC woodland plants. I would like to here why extinction versus the TC short cut makes ANY business sense. Seriously, when they're through with trilliums and such, are they going to go eliminate something else?
 
  • #10
Swords, I don't really know anything about holland blubs, but i guess it would make sense. Yes I agree that an unsustainable practice such as digging up trillium would eventually decimate them, although development and strip mining don't help either. Until you post I never really considered an outside international source. It would make sense that there is some other explaination as to why they appear in the little bags of peat as rhizomes. I have heard that have been some TC advances in trillium culture but I still go back to spring ephemerals being plants that have short lived growing seasons and long dormancy periods. It doesnt make sense to me that it takes alot of time/ resources to devote to trillium growth and development to price them at only 2-3 dollars, however as you stated large scale opperations can produce thousands of plants thus reducing price....

justjack, I never really paid attention to "nursery grown vs nursery propagated" until I started working where I do. I guess its that many people are unawre / don't look at the label. Reputable nurseries will gladly tell you their propagation methods, if their website doesn't list them already as is the case with CP's...I believe a cp nursery out your way mentions their sarracenia are divisons or seed grown right on their website... The company I was questioning was "Botanical Wonders" in Dobson NC (all that info comes from the package). I havn't found any website for them, let alone information on the web. I would assume a large wholesale nursery would have a website for business reasons. I find that a little odd, no website, no contact information at all...who knows maybe I'm digging for something that isn't there. As swords said, maybe theres an outside overseas source... As for plant extinction, do people who collect wild plants for profit care about extinction? How much surveillance goes on in the woods? Why have animals been hunted to extinction? Why are we in a fisheries crisis now when the ocean is big enough to support our fishing practices? Why was CITES created in the first place? Point being some people care more about profit than conservation. Do you think that plants aren't taken from the wild anymore and sold? Sure some plants are orginally taken from the wild and used for research or breeding, but those people are generally responsible when it comes to decimation of a plant population, they know 1 plant out of say 20 represents a significant part of the gene pool. I know that wild seed is sometimes collected too, but that isn't quite the same as taking a close to a whole population of mature plants. In terms of a TC short cut, say you can mass produce TC clones of trillium, how can you get them to grow quickly when their window of growth is limited to a month or 2? They don't have the same growing window Sarracenia do. I'm not sure TC vigor applies to trillium like it does to certain cp's either. Cypripedium's are produced via tissue culture in the nursery trade. Their growing window is longer, however not all season, and a seed pod produces 1000's of seeds. It takes 4+ years to produce a sellable plant. Thus the reason they are expenisve, slow growing and hard to propagate( 8 year plants generally are over 70 dollars, 4-5 years are at least 35).
 
  • #11
Sorry bring back this month old thread, but in the link Celtics2008 posted earlier, I was watching the segment on floating islands and I saw a quick shot of a sarra at 51s and a whole part about planting the sarra at around 1:51 into the movie. I thought that was pretty neat. They planted it in compost, I wonder how it did?
http://www.newfs.org/publications-and-media/video/creating-a-floating-island.html

The trillium is also Ontario's provincial flower here in Canada :) .

Edit: on that note, S. purpurea is also the provincial flower of Newfoundland and Labrador
 
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