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US retailers (rant warning)

I actually wrote this up as a PM rant to many of the Terra utric growers and decided I'd post it as a topic (understanding that it might get censored)(but knowing it doesn't mention any US retailers specifically...)

It almost seems unfair that the Europeans have such an embarrassment of riches. In addition to retail shops that carry all sorts of goodies, there are regularly, growers who post their spares for a song. Here's one right now.

With Neps, we seem to have equality but with other CPs - especially Sarrs & Utrics, we aren't even close. It's hard to grasp that a country our size cannot generate enough interest to get even a few existing retailers to add some decent Utrics - heck the Nep sellers already have existing highland conditions .... is it really true that even selling the occasional U. quelchii for $20-40 can't justify the small space on an existing highland shelf? :scratch:

Sorry - just needed to vent when I saw all of those utrics and their cheap prices ....
 
You guys got something we dont, chrome wire shelving :p
 
I....FEEEL.....THE PAAAAAAAAAAIN!
seriously, US. please get some U. reticulata, U. menziesii, U. dunlopii, and U. campbelliana PLZ....
 
Yeah, I think it's stupid that the country that Sarrs are from has less selection than the EU where growers will have something like a good 20 location-data labeled S.leucos. I think they just have more wilderness explorers with import permits (that are maybe easier to get there?) over the pond or something.
 
Don't you guys have laws limiting trade in sarrs?
Here we dont have sarrs so you can do whatever you want with them.
 
has to do with interest.....interest in growing and hybridizing orchids and the like has had a very long time root in Europe, same with growing and hybridizing Neps.....while ppl in the US put alot of energy growing and expanding their new country and having a civil war the europeans were building greenhouses and sending explorers to the far corners of the world looking for new plant species...... add that to the fact the Gulf Stream keeps western Europe alot warmer than most of the US though they are farther north and alot more individuals were easily able to grow the various plants.....

in short the Europeans had a heck of a head start on us.......most Americans didnt get interested in houseplants and the like till the mid 50's, whole lot of Europeans began their interest over 100 years earlier.....
 
What is really needed to increase the availability of different Utricularia species are growers who actively seek out new material from sympathetic European interests and then widely share it with the all too few enthusiasts here in the US. There is little interest in the genus so it's not profitable. A lot of the species going around here came from the generosity of Tim Malcom in Canada who was very much such a person. Tim wrote to growers all over the world and obtained many previously unobtainable species via trade and eventually shared them with some good bets here, like Pyro and myself known for our sharing ethic. We spread them around and around!
One of the problems with shelling out a lot of money for a plant is that it generates a sort of reluctance to share freely what cost you dearly, and also at the same time provides an ego boost to those "special" or "chosen" ones who have what no one else has. Until these mental shackles can be thrown off, distribution of rare species will be very slow indeed especially in this genus, and this genus was made to share since they take well to division!
So much depends on so few individuals like Tim. We need more interested and proactive growers of this fantastic genus of plants. One way to do this is to be active with your own collections and actually try to arouse interest by seeking out new growers and sending out as many plants as you can as often as you can. Maybe you'll inspire another Tim Malcom or at the very least you'll make a lot of people happy. Many European contacts have few postal restrictions and would gladly receive new material and will respond in kind. In my day I had one of the best collections in the US and I never spent (or made) a dime in the process so I know this works!
SO please, take the time to divide and send while the weather still permits, at least to growers here in the US!
 
Well said!

Wow!
Well said Tamlin ...and VERY accurate! :bigthumpup:

There are many people here who will trade, and many who will share outright, :beer:
and even a few people here who have given VERY freely and even offered without being asked! :usa2:

Some very special people, and very special friends here! But they are not to be taken advantage of! :nono:
No one wants to be used, especially by someone new or who only stops in to see what they can get from others. As some of you know, that sort of thing really bothers me, for it ruins things for everyone! It does take time to see who is "sincere" and who is not, but it can be done.

The one thing I don't think many people realize, is that with habitat destruction (among other things), that the future of many of these plants is in OUR hands! So when you freely propagate and share these plants with others, especially the expensive and rare ones, that you are not only helping other people, you are actually helping these plants to HAVE a future in this world!

:water:
 
a few people here who have given VERY freely and even offered without being asked!

I know a couple of these folks and they are participating in this very thread - I can't say thanks enough! :)

I too would like to see more exotic utrics widely available over here. Is it perhaps a difficulty of rearing enough material of these rarer/larger/slower moving species by one or two persons? From reading around the sites, it seems those two big companies overseas are more like a collective of smaller growers who all sell their plants through those guys as a "CP farmers market" sort of thing.
 
  • #10
I do agree that it's primarily about demand. Were there a larger desire for site-specific Sarracenia, for example, we'd see that; so too rarer Nepenthes, Heliamphora, and Utricularia, which have been far more popular in Europe and Asia until fairly recently.

Even so, ninety percent of my "newer' plants and seeds come from overseas . . .
 
  • #11
I do agree that it's primarily about demand. Were there a larger desire for site-specific Sarracenia, for example, we'd see that; so too rarer Nepenthes, Heliamphora, and Utricularia, which have been far more popular in Europe and Asia until fairly recently.

Even so, ninety percent of my "newer' plants and seeds come from overseas . . .

Yeah it's a bummer having to order from oversees for almost every order. I guess more expensive plants or rare plants would require a little bit more work to acquire, but I mean...there really aren't retailers who have N.macrophylla or H.nutans or U.nelumbifolia available all the time anywhere in N.America.

I can see how the cost of maintaining the more finicky plants might outweigh the want to have them in your selection...but the bigger European places manage to keep themselves running. I guess they get orders from all over the world though, and at this point the cost of startup over here to do the same would probably be crippling. I guess I can see a couple of sides to this. Europe has been at it longer, so they got there first, so they did establish buyers, and jumping into the market now over here would be painful.
 
  • #12
in all reality the cp hobby is a small one.....since the over seas companies will ship to the US its hard for a US company to start up other than being a reseller......small market with limited demand, to many places to buy and all the sudden everyone has trouble making a business out of it.....that and this hobby has a pretty high turn over rate, younger kids get interested in them and as soon as they discover girls or head to college they lose interest.....for every 20 new members that join up only one or 3 will be here in 3 or so years......
 
  • #13
what a sad statistic....i some how kept with the hobby despite the whole college disaster where i lost my entire collection...let's see if im here 2 years from now XD
 
  • #14
actually its about that way for most hobbies, especially ones with younger kids starting in it.....as with everything life gets in the way and time gets short.....school, girl/boy friends, wives, kids careers get in the way....just the way life goes....thats why i have a high die off rate, if the plant cant thrive on neglect it aint gonna live long....
 
  • #15
It seems like things with fancy utrics that have a small following, you really aren't going to be able to buy it anytime soon and it will be just isolated with various hard-core cultivationists that you have to be in the know to be able to trade for it else you won't be able to get any. I think that's good though, because a lot of them do require special care and if you *have* been around the rest of the CP community for a year or five to make friends with most of the growers, you probably know how to grow reasonably well with low attrition rate, and people will be willing to trade you some and you'll know who to ask. Even if there are plants that are outrageously priced, you know someone who doesn't know how to grow at all it will buy it anyway for having "a cool plant" and waste their money and kill the plant (OMG when I was first starting out, RIP poor alocasias and drosera and everything else I killed :-().
 
  • #16
another thing to keep in mind some species aint as easy as they appear to get started from a division.....aureomaculata is a good one.....i recieved this from Tim Malcom back when i was getting started in the hobby.....looking back i have no clue why it did not just up and die on me when i first got it.....

when i first got the plug it acclimated and started growing fine for me, infact it wasnt long before it became a weed....the species grows similar to sandersoni, kinda on the substrate more than in it and will send stolons air born into the neighbor pot.....in the close to 3 years i had this plant i sent plugs to around 18 ppl....most of them were a tack on to a different trade or it was one of a dozen Utrics....got a few responses that the plant didnt establish for them so i would send out a second plug....no big deal it grew like a weed for me....

bout the last 6 months i had it i could not find a single person i sent it to that it had established for so i thought what the heck ill get bigger plugs established and send them out potted.....even grown side by side to the parent pot i could not get another pot of it going.....eventually the soil in the original pot broke down and the plant was lost.....no clue why neither i nor anyone else i sent material to could get it established again.....

some other Utrics seem to do best if you start with a large division, if thats the case very few divisions get taken cause you have to wait for the parent plant to grow back to original size.......just cause you can get livida or sandersonii going from tiny plugs dont make it so for every species in the genus.....alot of time put in by many people may be needed to get very many of a certain species out in general cultivation...........
 
  • #17
I may be new to this forum, but I wholeheartedly agree with everyone who has posted. I often contemplate the Heliamphora and Cephalotus prices that I see on European sites and try to justify the shipping costs. I find it lame that most American retailers only have a couple species of Helis, but one Euro-site had many of the described species, including H. sarraceniodes which I absolutely love, not to mention several hybrids. I realize that I may not be completely competent yet to grow these plants, but there's no better way to find out than growing one, and not just by proxy - love everyone's photos that they share of these beauties BTW.

When I lived in the Czech Republic for two years I had no idea that there was 'gold in them there hills.' Of course it would have been extremely impractical to bring CPs home on the flight. Imagine the look on my neighbor's face when I would ask him or her to "Please stop violating my Heliamphora!"
 
  • #18
JB, price is not the issue here. Prices are made by you, me and everybody else. As long as some are willing to pay 200$ for a stupid cephalotus the seller will take it. This is about the possibility to buy certain species. Possibility...or maybe impossibility. Many will pay big $ for them but they don't have where to buy then from.

Tamlin, i'm just curious...You, from what i now, had a big collection of pygmy drosera...right?
What happened to them and the plants you sent away? I remember 4 years ago even if you wanted to buy them you could not find any. On this forum nobody had more than just a few to trade. A few popped up on ebay selling a gemmae for 3$!!! It seemed like they got lost somewhere.
It's all about the demand. You don't think a big ocean can stop a seller from getting them, do you?!
 
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