In culture, they are very rare, because there is no reload from the wild, unlike most other paphs species. The collector in China works for only one nursery, which sells those plants at a premium price per growth, all counted ( one tiny start is one growth, one 2 leafed old growth is one growth).
It is not rare in the wild, but no one is interested financially yet to find another collector in the same area, as it requires a lot of logistics ( stay there for some days or weeks, hope that he goes to the right place... and that he does not want a high price like his competitor...). In the trade, what keeps the price down are:
- Collectors who compete. As a result, sanderianum went at a time down to 8USD a big wild plant, gigantifolium down up to 3USD. As the market for paphs goes down dramatically, some collectors stopped working forever, and the prices are really up lately.
- or good in vitro labs that can sown and propagate the plants. Tigrinum is not 'difficult', it is quite specific. There has been a few times quite a bit of flasks made from one single seed capsule, in the USA and in the Netherlands, as well as twice in Taiwan. The seedlings were strong, and they grew like weed.
Paphiopedilum malipoense as an example is very difficult to grow from seed to blooming size fast and in big quantities, in a reliable way, but the collectors compete so much that the price for a mature plant is really cheap. Most of the trade consists of wild plants cultivated for a while indeed...
Paphiopedilum charlesworthii is very easy to grow from seed, so the price is low because it is easy to grow from flasks.
For tigrinum, the wild plants are already too expensive, there are not so many plants blooming in cultivation to make seeds, and the labs screw up a fair amount of seeds of it...
