'Pots of gold: the world’s most expensive house plants'

Deadly plant disease: Greed.

It’s a houseplant bubble that has seen the growth of those most human of off-shoots: plant speculation, plant swindling and outright plant crime. Pot plant collections have been raided at gunpoint. Botanical gardens have been trimmed at scissor-point. Some unscrupulous sellers have even taken to painting the leaves white.

Pots of gold: the world’s most expensive house plants

 

I see the term Chop shop - Wikipedia has taken on a new meaning.

 

Any and all legitimate, principled growers (our great friend, Steve Lucas/photopro, comes to mind) must find practices such as these appalling:

...the process of artificially pinkening the leaves of philodendrons by gassing them with a chemical that stimulates ethylene production, the hormone that ripens bananas and turns green tomatoes red. It wasn’t a scam, exactly – the technique was used for weddings and events – but it certainly wasn’t a new species.

At Kew, they have strict photo-sanitary controls and quarantine procedures to ensure harmful diseases aren’t spread through our horticultural or agricultural industries. “That’s a big problem with internet trade. It could be coming from anywhere. And it can decimate nurseries. I’ve seen diseases where the plants are fine in the morning, but by the evening they’re all dead.”

Filthy lucre, indeed.

 

wow. seeing this kind of stuff happening is just kinda disappointing.
I mean selling someone fake or ungrowable plants?! And for those prices, seriously?!