As someone who has communicated with vendors in Australia and imported a few tubers, the Australian government has made it fairly prohibitive to import or export to or from Australia. Live plants must be fumigated and then sit in a warehouse for six months or something like that. Kovachii isn't an easy grower and if plants came in as flask it may take a while for the surviving seedlings to get to any size. Costs and survivabilitu and wait times make it a huge hassle for aus importers, and if there are live plant importers they may be circumventing normal procedures which they would not want to broadcast of course.
If someone could be making a lot of money to do something, but seemingly nobody is doing it, there's probably a very good reason
Many grow orchids because of implied rarity or challenge; I used to spend hours online scouring for species to fill out the collection and the growing was seemingly secondary. Being too passionate for things with only physical beauty is a waste, because it fades quickly and leaves the viewer ultimately disappointed. What good is human physical beauty if it leaves the heart cold? Better to find something that has deeper beauty than just shat tickles the eye (not that physical beauty isn't pleasing for a moment but moments fade away). I do find it to be a little amusing that you are very excited that you can't get the species that you want and go to great lengths to explain your attempts and irritation, yet you still have not grown a single orchid (or maybe even touched one). It strikes me that this sort of feeling once imbued the minds of many of the first wealthy orchid collectors who spent thousands if not millions to send searchers into jungles to strip them of entire populations of desired orchid species and if they couldn't bring them all back they burned down the jungle to prevent their competitors from having any. Most plants died long before even getting to their destination or died soon after. Criminally wasteful. Also if you've mentioned to vendors that you'd like to grow plants to make more seedlings they don't want to help you become competition. That happened to me years ago when I was trying to get some phal lindenii
Good luck with your quest, I hope you find some plants that you can keep alive and flower
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Although physical beauty is fleeting I don't see whats wrong with appreciating it, the fact it is momentary is even more reason to appreciate it. I'm unsure if you have ever listened to an interview or speech given by Angie but you would soon find her physical beauty complements her inner beauty, and one could say after listening to her is secondary to her inner beauty. Personally physical beauty on it's own has never held my interest and the person is soon forgotten, especially when they are really boring personality wise, which 99% are. I've never come across anyone that has been able to even come close to the emotional intelligence, honesty and vivaciousness of Angelina in my own life experience and is why I can't help but mention her. Academic intelligence is not something I have any interest in and don't understand how the majority of people see that as an attractive or desierable characteristic. It's useless on it's own. Interesting people, much like those that appreciate the beauty of orchids, are things that hold my attention. Although I daresay Angelina is the exception here and proves to also be academically minded acquiring her pilots license which is quite a challange mathematically.Angelina is unusual in that her physical beauty is so aesthetically pleasing to the eye in a way that nobody else is capable of, to the extent that one can not help but be captivated by it on it's own.
To be honest if depth or inner beauty you are reffering to is so important to you then why do you grow orchids? Everyone is captivated by the physical beauty of people and things in some way, it's only natural and I kind of hate how society conditions people to feel guilty for liking things just because they are physically beautiful.
I don't see whats wrong with wanting to idolize an object of beauty, such as kovachii , especially when the bloom is so unbeliveable with the bright colour and size. Whenever I have heard stories of discovery of these incedibly beautiful and amazing orchids, they have never lived up to the expectations I had in my mind once I see them, but kovachii is different and exceeded my expectations and inspired my imagination for what could be possible, and was just refreshing to discover when I am so used to nature being a dissappointment.
I have grown lots of plants in the past, have owned and cared for animals as a small child and while growing up, I am imbued with and aware of nature, so I am definately not someone who seperates the beauty of these orchids from the mundane unglamorous side of the day to day effort required to care for them. I see the whole process of caring for a seedling of this plant and being able to watch it grow as a great personal accomplishment and something of a challange and art that I would like to have a go at.
For me, my view of nature is of it as a uncaring cold harsh reality and when I see something beautiful and fragile like kovachii has managed to be produced by something as random and destructive as nature and survive I am amazed by that and want to appreciate that.
The Australian government is so controlling about importing anything that I agree most people would not bother trying to import plants. But surely their are wealthy collectors here who do? If it is legal to import flasks here, of which I am unsure, then I would definately try imporitng one and see how I go. I have read flasks imported here are instantly thrown in the bin on arrival and destroyed. It's the expense that is stopping me at this time and just thought their would be someone in Australia growing them.
Hearing about how the wealthy would poach entire wild populations is so interesting as this kind of behavior sums up the personality type of those who become wealthy through academic intelligence. I am certainly not greedy like that and would never endanger the wild population or take plants from the wild. This is why I can't understand why their are not more for sale in captivity as I would have thought the Peruvian government would want to make sure it is able to safeguard the wild populations.
The only reason I even contemplated wanting to own a kovachii is because I see people on forums such as this who post about their kovachii all the time and they don't give the impression of being impossible to grow for a first timer.
I'm not trying to be amusing or purposely going to great lengths to explain myself, I am simply over enthusiastic about this orchid, and perhaps my eagarness to share my everythought about it is a sign of my needing to get a life, but I just can't help it. I've never found it to be the most normal thing to be posting on forums anyway and thought others who shared my interest would like the details of my postings. But I have come across this on other forums I used to be on with other hobbies and am always amazed when people pull me up for being overly passionate about something they also have an interest in. When you think about it the thought of people growing plants so that they can see them produce genitalia and call appreciating their genitalia a hobby is definately weird when put it into that perspective, wouldn't you agree lol.
Hopefully I can find one kovachii and watch it grow and bloom and thought coming into this that would be easy and just a matter of purchasing a relatively easy to care for blooming size potted plant from an expert or collector here in Australia. But after finding out the whole process is going to be more involved and complicated with raising plants from flask at this time I have pretty much given up finding one. Have taken on another interest. I was inspired by an extraordinary person. For me this person holds more interest than the maths or robots ever could, but as those things are a symptom of their life experience that so fascinates me, I can't help but be interested by them. When you consider their pursuit of thinking machines came form their love for another human being one can only be in awe of this person. The person I am referring to is Alan Turing, the father of computers, and the book is entitled "The Enigma" by a person called Hodges and is recommended reading.
