Nowadays in the USA, mass produced garden store CPs are pretty basic. Apart from Nepenthes "alata", VFTs, Drosera adelae and already-dead Darlingtonia cubes, you are unlikely to find much in the way of CPs at general garden stores/lowes etc. I have come across some surprisingly rare finds at these places, however.
Back in 1995, a local Georgia gardening store called pike's had a large selection of CP's from the mass produced "little pot of horrors" brand. One day, I saw that a new shipment had come in. It was incredible. In a massive tiered display of domed pots, I saw the largest, most robust mass-produced CP's I had ever seen. Usually, such plants were half-dead. Even more unusual were the types of plants in the domed pots. Most of the domed pots contained large specimens of some sort of BOREAL Pinguicula, most likely P. grandiflora. They all had flawless 4 inch rosettes and multiple purple flowers The other pots contained glistening Drosera rotundifolia clumps. Being delivered to hot Georgia in early summer, these cold-loving plants were most likely doomed to die within days. It still puzzles me why a mass-prodction CP company would mass produce such rare(for 1995, and for Georgia) and difficult plants. Has anyone seen these species in mass-production sale?
Another puzzling example happened when I bought 3 mass-produced Pinguicula primuliflora in 2002. All flowered several weeks later. 2 were obviosly primuliflora but the 3rd turned out to be Pinguicula ionantha with a white flower. How did a rare P. ionantha end up in a batch of tissue cultured P. primuliflora? Even more unusual, I contacted the source of the pings several years later and they said that they only had 1 specimen plant of P. ionantha that belonged to the owner of the business. They didn't have it when I got my plants. Could my "P. ionantha" have been a pigment-free TC mutant of P. primuliflora?
Post unusual experences with mass-produced CP's here.
Back in 1995, a local Georgia gardening store called pike's had a large selection of CP's from the mass produced "little pot of horrors" brand. One day, I saw that a new shipment had come in. It was incredible. In a massive tiered display of domed pots, I saw the largest, most robust mass-produced CP's I had ever seen. Usually, such plants were half-dead. Even more unusual were the types of plants in the domed pots. Most of the domed pots contained large specimens of some sort of BOREAL Pinguicula, most likely P. grandiflora. They all had flawless 4 inch rosettes and multiple purple flowers The other pots contained glistening Drosera rotundifolia clumps. Being delivered to hot Georgia in early summer, these cold-loving plants were most likely doomed to die within days. It still puzzles me why a mass-prodction CP company would mass produce such rare(for 1995, and for Georgia) and difficult plants. Has anyone seen these species in mass-production sale?
Another puzzling example happened when I bought 3 mass-produced Pinguicula primuliflora in 2002. All flowered several weeks later. 2 were obviosly primuliflora but the 3rd turned out to be Pinguicula ionantha with a white flower. How did a rare P. ionantha end up in a batch of tissue cultured P. primuliflora? Even more unusual, I contacted the source of the pings several years later and they said that they only had 1 specimen plant of P. ionantha that belonged to the owner of the business. They didn't have it when I got my plants. Could my "P. ionantha" have been a pigment-free TC mutant of P. primuliflora?
Post unusual experences with mass-produced CP's here.
