Albert's Greenhouse

I admit it: I buy plants on E-bay. And apparently, so do a lot of other people. At any given point in time, there are probably about 30,000 items listed on E-bay under the category of live plants. Strangely, plants and seeds are pretty much the only living things you can buy on E-bay. Live animals, even the really really resilient ones, are apparently forbidden. Delicate plants are perfectly fine, however.

In the course of buying plants on E-bay, I have read a whole bunch of plant titles and descriptions. And let me tell you that there are some creative people out there.

I just checked, and as of Monday morning, there's 1504 items on E-bay in the Plants section with the word "RARE" in the title. These supposedly "rare" plants include things like Typhonium venosum and Amorphophallus konjac, the two easiest and most prolific tuberous aroids. There's Sarracenia leucophylla, an easy growing pitcher plant. There are several packets of mixed cactus seed. And there's Dorstenia foetida, a greenhouse weed if I ever saw one.

Things I could go down to the local home depot and have a good chance of buying, like Adenium obseum are described as "rare". A maranta I could get in the Walmart nursery section is apparently "rare" to some sellers. So is the venus flytrap you often see near unto death on a rack at the hardware store.

To be fair, some of the items described as "rare" are actually not all that common, or at least new to commerce. And only about 5% of the plants listed under the category have "rare" in their titles. But it's difficult to narrow it down to those one or two things you couldn't get at a bricks and mortar store in your town, or at the very least at several stores on the internet.

But please - just a few rules?

-- If it's in tissue culture at a large producer, it's not rare. ( some carnivorous plants in tissue culture are actually very small production, difficult to get, and possibly extinct in the wild )
-- If it's a weed, it's not rare.
-- If it's growing wild in your backyard, it's not rare.
-- If you are selling one a day, it's not rare. At least not after the first week.
-- If you can get it at Walmart, it's definitely not rare.