Growers are keeping a low profile and installing expensive security measures to protect their collections. More...
I really hate these low based nerds that rip off plants. Sometimes you don't even know it is gone until you get around to attending to it and it is not there!! Most of my prized plants are in pots and while I believe that a few have been ripped from me (so many years ago I cannot recall anymore) it happened by people whom I trusted not by strangers! For the cycads it seems that using a homing implant like used on animals embedded into the trunk would provide an excellent way of monitoring or identifying wayward plants! Also requiring all plants to be tagged with bar-coded id would also help as the bar code could be easily read and would identify the plant! It is all just a matter of time until this type of problem is resolved!
Theft of any kind is frustrating to say the least, but stealing plants that are rare and are being grown soley for the purpose of bringing them back. How pathetic. Maybe I'll have to stop letting people know that my cycads are outside and have been for sometime now.
I had my collection of carnivorous plants stolen from me and another friend back in the early 1990's. Broke my heart to see my friend, a grown man cry. Plants that we had grown for years and nurtured lovingly, only to have them taken away by a couple of greedy scums ...all caught on security camera. To this day, we no longer invite strangers to our homes.
Glad to see, though, that it didn't make you give up. I can see how a plant theft of that nature might for some people.
Hi All, It's hard to believe that someone would stoop so low as to steal someone's plants. If anyone touched my jade collection I'm sure I would break down and cry too. Some people don't know how much love goes into these collections! Jenniflower
.this seems to be the same all over the world... =O(... The strange part is that many of these tefts are done by individuals who end up destroying or killing the plant in question... and this really is the biggest loss, since you can't get the treasured plant back alive...
Another type of theft that is really sad is when people remove plants from the forest / bush. I don't know if it still happens here but at one stage tree ferns were being ripped of left right and centre. Then some sort of tagging system came in to try and control the sale of illegal plants. Another one prone to illegal removal are the grass trees ( Xanthorrhoea preissii)??? My father had some beautiful hot house orchids stolen many years ago. He was extremly upset however he did get his day in court. Liz