Seedling Phobia I

Text Box: Seedling Phobia This is the introduction to a three part commentary which I am calling Seedling Phobia. In my commentaries I will be talking about many different reasons why mistakes are made when identifying a plant and why camera’s, pictures, the life cycle of a lily bloom, zones, fertilizers and types of soil, tubers leaves, stems and rhizomes, will have an affect on identifying plants. Many times when a water lily, or lotus cannot be identified the word “seedling” will usually be used before a real identification has been verified, I call this Seedling Phobia. Most people are happy with a beautiful blooming water lily or lotus in their pond, they don’t care about the origin or the parentage of the plant. There are a groups of people out there that have decided that they are going to identify and find the origin of all water plants and in doing so they will rid the world of those who would sell seedlings as true plants. This is great, and I applaud them for this cause I think if you order a lily with the name Blue Beauty you shouldn’t get a Jack Wood. If they are paying for a hybrid like a Blue Beauty it would not be fair for them to get a seedling. An interesting point in order for a lily to be a named hybrid they have had to have been a seedling first, just thought I would mention this from the beginning. First of all most of the people who grow the lilies on a commercial basis, will tell you that you cannot truly identify a plant by a picture of it’s blooms. With a picture there could still be a margin of error. Why you say? Well first of all the time of day the picture was taken, the type of camera lens used, the angle at which the picture was taken. You can get different color variations of the same bloom because of all these factors. Depending on what stage the plant is in the leaves can also look different from one stage to the other. If your trying to identify by the rhizome then you would need to truly have the plant in your hands to look at all the details that help identify what the plant is. Sometimes even that can be questionable, as you will see in the example I am going to give you in the next paragraph. We had an experience once with some tropical lilies we received from one of our suppliers in Florida. They were supposed to be the night blooming lily Antares. The blooms were a lighter pink with white instead of the striking red blooms that Antares is so famous for. We decided to call the supplier right away, we know that sometimes mistakes can be made when pulling or packing a box., when we told him in the process of the plants being shipped the blooms had opened and were light pink and white, and asked what the deal was. He said he had gotten them from his source and he was very confident that the lilies were Antares. His source I might add is supposed to be one of the “Guru’s” in identifying water plants. I decided to send a picture via email to the “Guru” and ask if she could identify the lilies? I emailed the picture along with a note asking if the tropical lilies in the picture were Antares? Very soon the answer came back and the answer was, “No these are not Antares these are, you guessed it, Seedlings.” I emailed back and told her that she traded these “Seedlings” as the tropical lily Antares to our supplier. A little later the email answer came back and her reply was “Oh I forgot that your in Colorado, and sometimes the Antares blooms will be a lighter color when grown in your part of the country.” Interestingly the lilies were pink with the white in the petals when we received them from our Florida supplier! I want to add something else here, that is that sometimes a plant may have a color change in the bloom from what it normally produces, when grown in different soil, or zones. So the statement made about the Antares having a lighter color when grown in Colorado is not far fetched. I will talk about that more in part three of this commentary. To give the benefit of the doubt to the “Guru” I ordered some Antares from another company in Florida and I planted one of these Antares right next to one of the said “seedlings”, when the Antares from the other company bloomed it was the color that an Antares is supposed to be, as were all the other Antares I ordered from that company. Don’t get me wrong my original source for the Antares is a reputable company and has by far the best tropical lilies in the U.S. the main reason we order from them, however, he was confident the person he traded with is supposed to be one of the top people in identification this why he was certain they were supposed to be Antares. Please be aware I don’t want to say the “Guru” was trying to do anything underhanded, my point is that you cannot truly identify a plant from a picture and especially not just by a picture of a bloom. She may of made a mistake when labeling or pulling the plants when she sold them to my supplier. Also that even the experts who have the task of identifying and making sure of the plants origin, need to be careful in identifying something by a picture. It isn’t fair to the person who thought they were selling a true plant to be crucified, by those who thought they were truly identifying the plant by a picture and saying the plant is a seedling. They need to be absolutely sure that it is a seedling before they do this. I have both heard and seen examples of this type of crucifixion of those that had sold a plant thinking it was a true plant and I don’t think it is fair. Sometimes the identifier’s of true plants and those who grow them commercially and handle the plants as a profession, can make mistakes. The other point is in most cases, the person who traded or sold the plant as a true plant isn’t a dishonest person. It is sad whenever mistakes happen, but this doesn’t mean the problem can’t be solved. If you have received a plant that wasn’t what it was supposed to be, contact the source that you purchased it from and see if they will do right by you. In most cases it can be solved and everyone is happy. How many times did anyone get something they had a problem with from a chain store, hardware store or automotive parts store, and took it back and received customer satisfaction and in most cases this applies to buying water plants. Part two we will talk about camera’s and pictures and why they can make it hard to give a true identification of the plant.

Rectangular Callout: Antares

Rectangular Callout: Seedling???