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Good luck, plants are available, but their Flask list is STILL 2022. In a recent Canada order, I was able to get only I of 5 requested flasks. Disappointing your customers has consequences.
Sorry for your troubles. I seem to be seeing a lot less out there available this year than last, for lots of vendor lists. And Sam is completely gone, which crushes my spirit. I’d like to understand what your last sentence means; I grasp that you’re disappointed not to get what you want but I figure it’s just an industry trend, not related to one vendor?
 
No, I am specifically calling out Ecuagenera. I twice sent in a flask list request, for pickup at the March 2023 Montreal Show, and the May 2023 brickyard sale in Toronto, and they failed twice to respond to my purchase request. No response, None. I later ordered flasks through an event group sale, and received 1 of 5 flasks. I was informed the other 4 were unavailable. Currently as of this very moment 3 of the unavailable flasks are still on the flask sales list. I understand that they are obviously busy but their lack of managing their sales list on their website is a waste of my time. My intent is to inform others to be prepared to be disappointed.
 
Is this where the "I am holier than thou" crowd who wishes death and incarceration and humiliation on anyone with suspect plant chimes in and asks why so many people have no problem buying plants that are either illegally collected at some point regardless of valid import papers at the destination or sourced from illegally collected plants?

I didn't think so.
 
Is this where the "I am holier than thou" crowd who wishes death and incarceration and humiliation on anyone with suspect plant chimes in and asks why so many people have no problem buying plants that are either illegally collected at some point regardless of valid import papers at the destination or sourced from illegally collected plants?

I didn't think so.
I plead 5th amendment lol.
 
Is this where the "I am holier than thou" crowd who wishes death and incarceration and humiliation on anyone with suspect plant chimes in and asks why so many people have no problem buying plants that are either illegally collected at some point regardless of valid import papers at the destination or sourced from illegally collected plants?

I didn't think so.
I don't see the connection. I have never had any evidence of illegally collected plants from Ecuagenera.
 
I have been burned a few times myself. Not by flasks but by plants at a really competitive price yet when I unwrapped them, almost every species was rootless.
I mainly purchased smaller plants that looked so good, things like Pleurothallis, Restrepia, Masdevallia, Maxillaria, etc. But when I consistently got burned, I had to stop looking. (To bring a new batch of plants home and to slowly watch them turn brown and die, is tough)
I first encountered them at Rock Center Show in 2003 or 4 in NYC. So I have not purchased anything from them for almost 20 years.
I would never tell people not to buy from them, I understand people love them, but I won’t give them any more of my money.

If I want things that croak, I’ll buy frogs.
 
I have been burned a few times myself. Not by flasks but by plants at a really competitive price yet when I unwrapped them, almost every species was rootless.
I mainly purchased smaller plants that looked so good, things like Pleurothallis, Restrepia, Masdevallia, Maxillaria, etc. But when I consistently got burned, I had to stop looking. (To bring a new batch of plants home and to slowly watch them turn brown and die, is tough)
I first encountered them at Rock Center Show in 2003 or 4 in NYC. So I have not purchased anything from them for almost 20 years.
I would never tell people not to buy from them, I understand people love them, but I won’t give them any more of my money.

If I want things that croak, I’ll buy frogs.
Which frogs? PDFs?

My last experience with them, some pleuros that were rotted when I unwrapped them. Though a Dracula from them in spike.
 
Nah, they do not croak loud enough!
Either Bull frogs or Green frogs which I raised in my koi pond for about 25 years.
They were so cool to hear during the warmer weather.
 
I don't see the connection. I have never had any evidence of illegally collected plants from Ecuagenera.
That doesn’t mean anything Eric. Where do you think all their kovachii came from and thus all their kovachii hybrids? Ask Peru if they ever issued a permit for them to collect and ask them to produce a valid CITIES export permit from Peru. Better yet contact the folks at the Quito botanical garden and ask them. Now that you’ve been formally notified I would assume the same vitriol you usually have for other collectors who find themselves with questionable plants that have been “laundered” through legal means. If that is not enough for you, do a Google search regarding Ecuagenera collectors arrested with trucks full of illegally poached Peruvian orchids trying to cross the border back into Ecuador. But then again, we always assume our plants are so “clean”. Thus, the I am holier than thou nonsense that alienates so many good people from this list. Yeah, you have illegally collected plants and/or hybrids or crosses made from illegally collected plants.
 
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No comments on illegal collection...but they do have their labs and nursery and that is a fact.
I had bought many Pleuthallids species from them a few times in the past (preorder, mostly bare-root). Although they were not top-quality plants, they were fine and reasonably priced. Just remember that not everyone has the condition to grow pluerothallids and bare-root plants may not be a wise choice for new growers.
Ps, I no longer have a large collection of orchids or "actively" growing orchids. My last order from them was about 10 years ago.
 
That doesn’t mean anything Eric. Where do you think all their kovachii came from and thus all their kovachii hybrids? Ask Peru if they ever issued a permit for them to collect and ask them to produce a valid CITIES export permit from Peru. Better yet contact the folks at the Quito botanical garden and ask them. Now that you’ve been formally notified I would assume the same vitriol you usually have for other collectors who find themselves with questionable plants that have been “laundered” through legal means. If that is not enough for you, do a Google search regarding Ecuagenera collectors arrested with trucks full of illegally poached Peruvian orchids trying to cross the border back into Ecuador. But then again, we always assume our plants are so “clean”. Thus, the I am holier than thou nonsense that alienates so many good people from this list. Yeah, you have illegally collected plants and/or hybrids or crosses made from illegally collected plants.
First of all, I'm curious to see examples of my "vitriol for other collectors". If someone has possibly illegally collected plants I have mentioned it. I also acknowledge that there is a possibility that some of the hybrids I have from Ecuagenera could be from illegally collected sources. However, the plants are lab grown hybrids and legal. Thanks for the heads up.
 
No comments on illegal collection...but they do have their labs and nursery and that is a fact.
I had bought many Pleuthallids species from them a few times in the past (preorder, mostly bare-root). Although they were not top-quality plants, they were fine and reasonably priced. Just remember that not everyone has the condition to grow pluerothallids and bare-root plants may not be a wise choice for new growers.
Ps, I no longer have a large collection of orchids or "actively" growing orchids. My last order from them was about 10 years ag

The presence of a lab has no bearing on the status of plants. Following this logic through to its conclusion, if a nursery has a lab and crosses two plants of rungsuriyanum, canhii, anitum, or any other plant that is questionable from the source location, those plants would then be OK, no problem, the presence of a lab makes everything acceptable.

Myself and a good many others would not agree with that logic.

I, myself, am not a fan or advocate of CITIES as currently structured and enforced. Those who opine that CITIES has, and is, killing more plants that any poacher or collector ever did are accurate. Plants die in far greater numbers, where they are, for a wide variety of reasons and CITIES ensures the loss of entire populations of plants, some very rare, some forms never to be seen again.

Since the 1990's the two largest individual purveyors of plants that have questionable legality going back to the source, and hybrids derived from those plants, have been located in Germany and Ecuador. We all know who they are and I venture a guess we all have plants that have come from them or through them. Speaking broadly, Taiwan does not honor or enforce CITIES for imports. Every sanderianum, anitum, gigantifolium, stonei, vietnamense, and hangianum plant or hybrid that has come from Taiwan has been derived from illegally collected plants. You have a Paph Chi Hua Dancer? It is spectacular and from an illegally sourced gigantifolium. We are all waiting with great anticipation for seedlings of the album stonei to be available (they are in Taiwan), all derived from an illegally collected plant. No, Malaysia didn't issue a special collecting permit for that plant. But if it enters the United States, Canada or Europe with a CITIES, yahoo! I am not contributing to illegal collecting. Think again, that logic in not sound.

My issue with wishing death, incarceration, and other severe punishments on poor, often desperate collectors who sell plants to pay for vaccines, school uniforms, or a new horse to harvest barely enough crops to feed his family, selling those plants for pennies on the dollar to middle men, is that each of us have plants that are in one form or another not totally legal from the source to the greenhouse bench, yet we act like we are morally superior to someone who legally buys a few rungsuriyanum from a local European nursery and takes them home with great anticipation. These folks have not done anything wrong, and deserve better than to be alienated from this forum by a few vocal slipper people pointing out, at times aggressively, how their plants are illegal and they are going to be reported to the authorities and should be shamed into turning their prize purchase in to a rescue center, where these same critics will be waiting to buy "legal" plants. This is the "I am holier than thou" group who think all their plants are so above board, yet they are not, not by a long stretch.

So when we line up to buy plants from Ecuador, Germany, and Taiwan, ask the tough questions and do the math. All is not what it is represented to be. Buy your plants, build the best collection you can, cherish your collection, and let people alone. You order plants from these sources? Spare us all the blatant hypocrisy.

Best,
 

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