DEBATE TOPIC I: Why orchids and not Nepenthes?

[bobh]

The general public has been buying pretty flowers for centuries and orchids are very striking and seem like a bargain. A group of 25 or 50 orchids in a big box store gets your attention. If you buy one, the flower will last for several months with no special care.
On the other hand, Nepenthes when available in popular stores as larger specimens such as Miranda or ventrata usually have a lot of broken or dead pitchers and if you do buy one, the remaining pitchers will probably die soon from the trauma of shipping. Then to get more pitchers the plant needs reasonable light and to be watered regularly. My guess is that few first time buyers come back for more.
I think the pretty flower mindset wins.
(How cool would it be to have a couple of Nepenthes in a hotel room or restaurant the way orchids are all over the place now?)

[peterhewitt]

Oct 9, 2010 7:16:20 GMT -10 rainforest said:

PLEASE someone who has grown nepenthes PLEASE write a real book on culture.

M

Perhaps you should.

[nepsaroundthehouse]

Most people I know and talk to that have houseplants end up killing them. I would even speculate that the majority of people that have houseplants don't know how to take care them and just figure that if they last for a few months, that's pretty good. My mom has killed a hillside of Boston ferns, African violets, Anthuriums, and other foliage houseplants that one gives as gifts for Mother's Day, Easter, Christmas, etc. So it's not a lack of information on how to grow Nepenthes that's the problem, it's that most people don't know how to grow any plant reasonably well. My mom kills pothos and that's almost impossible.

The reason orchids took off and Neps didn't is mainly why people even buy the things: As gifts for other people. Think about it. How many times do people show up with orchids and African violets, Easter lilies as gifts for the dinner table or living room? Lots! Flowers put on a nice display and bring about a happy mood in the house. Nepenthes being carnivores don't exactly evoke visions of warmth. Curiosity yes. I could just imagine showing up at Thanksgiving with a Nepenthes and saying, "Here's this really cool plant I got for you. Put it next to the cornucopia and be sure it gets plenty of insects to eat, too. Oh, and keep little Johnny from tossing in turkey, yams, and potatoes in the pitchers because Nepenthes don't like people food."

I'm surprised that Nepenthes haven't been grown more for floral bouquet spreads though. I've seen Sarracenia mixed in with other types of flowers and foliage to make nice centerpieces. Nepenthes pitchers would look great (may have to be preserved some way) mixed in with other plants for a nice display.

But really in the end, Nepenthes don't have the appeal that orchids do. When most people look at orchids they view them as exotic, stunning, and mysterious in a way. If Nepenthes brought about those emotions, then there would be a lot more of them in stores and all kinds of crazy hybrids going on.

Joel

[morbus]

I hope You're right Peter
Id like to see neps at stodels or stark ayres and the rest!!

[peterhewitt]

I feel that interest in strange and unusual plants is on the increase, along with the increase of interest in Extreme sports all around the globe. More people are Base Jumping, Skydiving and doing generally crazy things than ever before.
These are precisely the kind of people that could develop an interest in hobby Nepenthes cultivation, when information and material is readily available.
I really think that a resurgence of interest is just around the corner, people are getting tired of seeing the same big white Phalaenopsis/Dendrobium Orchids all over the place.

[leilani]

Nepenthes will never compete with orchids in the cut-flower market. I have tried several times to interest different individuals in using them in arrangements. I believe something very interesting could be done but it would be a bold move and few are willing to try.

---

It is one of the sad facts of the nursery business that most of the plants sold are doomed. Less well know is how many fine plants are doomed even before sale and end as compost. I was shocked when I first discovered just how many plants the average orchid nursery disposes of. I remember collecting hundreds of different dendrobiums, oncidiums and brassia from a couple of growers one year. These were much larger and nicer than those that made it to market. "Why were they considered "trash"?" Because they had grown slightly larger than the optimum size for their shipping model.

Running a nursery requires you to view your plants from two different perspectives: as the "the rare exotic tropical" that collectors like ourselves love and as an "agricultural commodity" to be grown, sold, packaged and shipped. I used to find it difficult to send off rare beauties to, in some cases, an almost certain death even when paid to do so. Joel is right, there are a great number of people who can't tell a plant needs water until after it is dead. Still, people have the right to buy and kill plants. In fact, the cynic would say that this is the bread and butter of plant sales. In Stewart McPherson second volume of PPOW it says that BE produces "180,000 plants annually"! We can be pretty sure most of the rajah are dead but where did the rest of these go and how many are alive today?

Nepenthes when available in popular stores as larger specimens such as Miranda or ventrata usually have a lot of broken or dead pitchers and if you do buy one, the remaining pitchers will probably die soon from the trauma of shipping. / bobh

It seem to me that there are several reasons that attempts sell these plants in the larger venues have failed. One reason would be as bobh describes with larger plants that have received poor attention and lost a good deal of their presentation value. Another would be the "death-cube" type plant ( ... once again the flytrap association) that has no presentation value and sell simply as a curiosity. What you don't see in the big stores is a varied selection of distinctive, colorful Nepenthes with fresh adult pitchers in a salable size.

Of course, these are tropical plants and not every garden center is capable of maintaining them. On the other hand, I have been in many large outlets that have excellent, well maintained tropicals for sale. You can't really blame the garden outlet as most are unfamiliar with these plants and the "death-cubes" don't even really enter the store as plants proper but rather as boxed novelties.

Gaining access to these larger retail venues is not for the faint of heart or small of pocketbook. If, Nepenthes are to make it into the mainstream then, production would need to increase dramatically. This means the kind of production facilities we see in other areas of agriculture turning out huge number of a consistent quality product at affordable prices.

There are a few large players who can do this. Unfortunately, these are companies that generally produce large flats of seedlings and offer little variety. These are then sold to middlemen or contract nurseries to be grown out and then resold to the large retail outlets. This would seem like a workable plan except that few nurseries are familiar with growing these plants and it is not unusual to find flats of N. madagascariensis being sold at fire-sale prices on EBay as they try to unload them before declaring their larger effort a loss.

What about BE, Exotica, The Nepenthes Nursery or MT? Import restriction and production costs make it unlikely that we will see any of these products showing up at Lowe's soon. Importing plants is expensive and such plants generally require acclimation after shipping and, according to my vendors, it can take a year or longer, in some cases, of grow time to bring these plants back to sale presentation quality after import. This is not something that interests most vendors outside of a few catering to collectors.

Nepenthes will never gain the kind of acceptance that orchids have. Still, I agree with Peter in that interest is on the rise. High quality Nepenthes hybrids can be grown and produced in large numbers and at affordable prices (the production of species is a bit more problematic) but, before they can become a success story in your local big-box store, growers, sellers and the public need to be educated and production methods perfected and streamlined.

[rainforest]

Colorful flowers really has nothing to do with anything. The Bonsai group doesn't really care if their miniature trees bloom or not, foliage plant lovers rarely care if their plants flower, bromeliad nuts while they do flower, most growers of broms don't want their plants to bloom because this would end the plants terminal tip. Cacti and succulent growers rarely grow succulents because of their flowers and staghorn ferns never bloom, there are people who collect ant-plants and they grow these for their ballooned appendages-not far off from nepenthes pitchers, so flowers is not an issue for whether a plant collector will buy them.

Back to the literature, write how easy they are to grow and more people will grow them.
M

[philgreen]

This has been an interesting thread, with a lot of good points made. But there is (I think) another reason why Neps aren't as popular as orchids, bonsai, cacti & succulents etc - which I'm suprised no one has mentioned.

They don't grow 10 metres tall !

You can have a large collection of most other things grown to maturity in a relatively small space. But very few people (including most of us who do grow them) that can actually grow dozens (let alone hundreds) of Neps to their full splendour. Most are very young plants or regularly 'pruned' to fit a restricted space.

[nolpenthes]

Over the last year our nursery has started to make available many variety of CP, mostly Sarracenia & Drosera. What I have found is that on a whole, it's very much the miseducation and stigma that most of these plants carry that set them apart from their Orchid counterparts. Like some of you have mentioned 9/10 people have never even seen a Nepenthes, let alone know the growing requirements/environment.

Another thing I have noticed, is how the enthusiasm and availability of customer service play a direct role in the success & sale of these plants. If I spend 5 minutes explaining the growing requirements of a VFT or any variety of Sarr. to a customer that is checking out the "Bogdominium,"
(supplied by G.H.) a sale is generally made. They are amazed/mystified that these plants can be grown on the average sunny deck, also that they need not be brought inside over our mild/moderate zone 8 climate.

I'm going to convert a fair portion of my indoor greenhouse space that is currently located above a very active and humid pond in to a 'Carnivorium' for the spring of 2011. A real void of CP plant suppliers in my city does exist, I plan to fill that void. With the right instruction and pre-cautions given before the final sale, expectations and price become your only obstacle...

The light requirement for Nepenthes, Temperature variations, relative humidity need, mixed with the hiked price tag on these plants may be a challenge but...

What's life without challenge?

My observations on a retail level confirm that for all those who have discovered these plants, most return for suggestions on how to expand their new hobby. That to me is worth the risk of bringing in a fair shwack of high grade hybrids and cultivar's to test the untested Victorian waters.

While I feel Nepenthes may not be destine for wedding cakes and/or boojeeboo "forgive me" / "I love you sweetie" bouquets, they have their niche. Like anything else in this world, people don't usually know they want something until you tell them about it.

~nOL

[leilani]

Like anything else in this world, people don't usually know they want something until you tell them about it.

YOUR HIRED!

[nolpenthes]

I would move tomorrow sir. ;D

~respect

[leilani]

You can have a large collection of most other things grown to maturity in a relatively small space.

Your showing the wisdom of the experienced collector. But, I'm not sure that efforts to widen the market will necessarily be directed at collectors. It would seem to me that the far greater market potential lies not in the established market of collectors but rather in the untapped market of the "new grower".

Maybe the plant needs a new name .... Jesus Orchids^TM

I'll be working on the poster! ;D

[rainforest]

Like almost any hobby, people who buy their first nepenthes becomes fanatics and spend countless $$$ and try to rob banks or hijack little kids for their lunch monies so they could fill their need to get more plants.
What happens to these crazed nuts and why do they stop cold turkey and end their collecting? The reason I have learned is that many give up when they come to a halting dead-end. A dilemma that they an't find out why their plants are dying or just simply not growing.

More emphasis needs to be placed on a horticulturalist's aspect of writing a book of nepenthes culture. I believe orchid collecting wasn't a big thing until all the countless books on the subject started to pop out of the book shelves. So many hobbies and collections have arisen from great books on the subject. The raising of freshwater aquarium plants blossomed out of a few devoted enthusiasts to what it is today, aquarium plants is big business! Tropical fish books are being printed and info on forums have made popularity of so many fishes interesting and with careful growing and rising techniques, it's no wonder everyone wants to raise a red dragon arowana. Websites showing their culture, feeding, water and everything is there. Goldfish, African cichlids, you name it, it can be found.
Nepenthes, well it can be found, but unfortunately the media is centered around big names and people in far places that really haven't even grown a nepenthes outside of a test tube. Their websites condone the use of fertilizers and methods of growing that would stunt any hobby to its origins.
Get nepenthes out there with availability, knowledge and information of growing them, and you will have another huge success hobby like bonsai, orchids, bromeliads, hoyas, staghorn ferns, adeniums, you name it!

M

[rainforest]

I have asked many orchid growers and many say that the price of a flowering orchid has fallen sharply. Many foreign imports have appeared in our markets and garden shops and a flowering orchid can sell for as little as $6-8. Now compare this with a pricey nepenthes and this has a lot to do with popularity choices. While there are collector orchids, these are fewer and far in between. It's also true with nepenthes. There are collectors who would pay $200 for a small plant on Ebay, but I hardly believe any orchid could fetch such prices on Ebay. But there are far more massed orchid buyers for the under $10 price tag and that is why orchids sell so well.
When I did plant sales at a plant booth, I sold my nepenthes among hybrid orchid growers, adeniums, etc. I would say that everyone who did pass by the sales tables ALWAYS remarked or got attracted to them. Kids especially just hovered like flies on (brown word). Now these kids will be our future plant buyers, so how did we lose them from this enthusiastic stage to losing them to orchids, broms, tillandsias, bonsai.
So the appeal isn't what's the problem. people are aware, people know what they are and ignorance is not the issue.
You will see bigger demand for nepenthes when the literature begins to treat them as just novelty houseplants, not mission impossible to grow exotics. I constantly hear all the myths harping what has already been published in all the books and mags. The next time someone has an opportunity to showcase their nepenthes, please express how easy, how much fun and how wonderful these plants are. And please stop saying that these plants need reverse osmosis water, or distilled water or only capture bugs for nutrients. Tell them that I grow these among my houseplants or my orchids or plants in general.

Michael

[marka]

The main reason Nepenthes will never be as popular as orchids, in addition to all the reasons mentioned previously, is that women, generally, do not like them!