The Journey of a Rare or Tropical Plant | How and when to buy!

hello everybody glad you could make it my name is kaylee ellen and welcome to the journey of a rare plant and the different ways in which you can buy them [Music] so you're into rare and unusual plants plants which can't really be found in big box stores you have to basically look online whether that be direct from the grower or from a bespoke plant shop now what people don't talk about is the process that these plants go through to go from the grower to your doorstep how that actually affects the price you pay for said plant and the risks involved in the process i say this of course because a house plant is a live good and live goods cannot be bought without risk whether that be from the buyers side or the seller's side in this video we are going to discuss this timeline and at which points you can intercept this timeline to buy what is considered a rare or exotic plant we're also going to talk about the pros and cons of intercepting the different points in the timeline in order for you to make a more informed decision about the purchase and how you'd personally like to go about buying these houseplants for this video i've done a kind of overview as to what i think the process is from a plant essentially beginning with the grower in another exotic country such as thailand or indonesia for example all the way to basically your house so i've broken it down into the following steps that i think are important to start the plants are grown and propagated in growers nurseries the plants are then sold from the grower either retail or wholesale which is very interesting and we're going to cover this then i'm going to talk about the shipping process what i mean by this is the shipping process from the grower to yourself or from the grower to a individual such as a shop then at this point plants are sold by either private sellers or plant shops we're then going to talk about the shipping process part two i haven't given it a better name but essentially i wanted to talk about this shipping process separately to the first one because i believe it is slightly different i'm going to get into the reasons as to why that is obviously as we go through the video the last step of course is the plan reaching you reaching your doorstep so before we take a deep dive into this timeline i want to give a very very quick notice on poached plants because this i'm not considering part of the timeline [Music] occasionally unfortunately we do see people collecting plans from the wild and trying to sell them on the internet to make a profit this is totally illegal and considered extremely ill behavior in the planned community and is not tolerated if you suspect you have been offered a plant that has been essentially taken from the wild or poached please decline to make that purchase and report the individual responsible wherever you can as i say it's not part of the timeline because it shouldn't be part of the timeline but i did want to mention it just so we cover all grounds here because technically these things do happen it sucks but it happens okay so the first step in our little journey from our red plant to our doorstep is of course with the grower i'm counting this as the first step growers usually propagate a given plant until they have enough numbers of that plant that they deem okay to start selling they will of course keep a percentage back as mother plants so they continue this process over and over the amount of each plant that a grower has to offer depends usually on three things the first is the amount of mother plants they have now usually supply and demand more or less dictate this if a plant isn't in high demand the grower is not likely to put their time and energy into growing and propagating these plants in order to sell the second factor is the ease of propagation i does the plan propagate easy does it have a low failure rate i'm sure we've all taken propagations of plants at home and they have failed some are just a little bit easier than others this does apply to the growers growing these plants as well obviously if they have a high failure rate they're going to get less propagations and the plant is less available and leaks onto the market much slower the third factor is the speed of growth on the individual plant in question which can be either down to the growers experience or the growers climate or just the plant itself to be honest the second step in the process is the growers selling the plants now this is quite an interesting one a lot of changes have happened in the last two to three years on this this used to be a little bit different from what it is now generally speaking growers overseas so be it thailand be it indonesia either offer retail wholesale a combination of both that's generally the options that you have if you're unaware of the difference between these two things basically to sell wholesale is to allow the sale of a large quantity of items often at a reduced price per unit which in this case is a plant more often than not there is a minimum quantity actually required in order to buy a plant wholesale this can range from grower to grower usually dependent on stock levels now this is why a lot of people can't buy wholesale if you're buying retail because the sheer amount of plants required to purchase the plant you want is just out of scope for most people that is why this option is usually reserved for shops to sell retail is basically to offer the item at a higher price and can be sold to an individual buying essentially one plant at a time the way in which growers sell these plants has changed a lot this is probably due to supply and demand generally but this has been massively impacted by colvit 19. prior to this many growers offered plants at wholesale prices and they were considered quite cheap the only catch obviously is you would have to buy an awful lot of them now however the concept of selling wholesale for many growers is not even an option anymore this is due to the fact that the quantities of plants aren't there not only that but the market value of a given plant is often four or five times higher than the price it previously was when they were able to offer wholesale so what i'm saying is it's not really worth the money to them they would be losing money if they did this as a result growers certainly as of recording this video are only really offering retail prices and they are selling plants at a price reflective of plant shop prices this means whether you are a shop or an individual customer you are paying the exact same price for the same plant the fact that this is usually the only option now means that plant shops do buy the plants at these prices and then add on extra margin this further inflates the market value this then encourages the growers to add on extra margin to their prices because they can see the prices that the shops are charging now those shops now have to buy back the same plant at the growers new price and then keep on adding a margin and in that way it's cyclic it keeps on repeating itself from the shop side to the growers side from the shop side to the growers side it's a never-ending cycle [Music] the only way this cycle can be broken is obviously if the demand for the product decreases that said buying direct from the grower is the first point in this timeline in this stage process that you can purchase a plant now we're going to talk about the shipping process a little bit because honestly this is where the real pros and cons start to come into play now as i mentioned in the beginning of the video there are two shipping processes involved the first shipping process is from the grower direct to either to a shop or an individual such as yourself and the second shipping process is from a private seller to yourself or from a shop to yourself this part of the video though specifically focuses on the shipping process from the grower [Music] so when you buy from a grower and the plant comes literally from them to you to your doorstep this is considered buying direct because of course there is no middleman it's just you and the grower now this doesn't actually mean that your plan is just put neatly in a box and it just gets to you and everything's fine the process is actually a lot more involved in order for a live plant to legally leave the grower if it is in a different country from that grower and it's flying across the world eg from indonesia to say the usa it will need to be inspected by an official plant health authority in the growers country and be provided with a certificate this certificate is known as a vital sanitary certificate and is usually provided at an additional cost to the buyer certificate is basically to state that the plant that is with the grower has been grown prepared and essentially shipped according to the regulations of the destination countries plant health agency so if we're shipping from indonesia to usa this certificate will say that this the way that it is being done the way the plan is being grown prepared inspected everything like that conforms to the rules of u.s customs plant health inspection agency now depending on the grower you will be offered either phyto-sanitary documentation included which is possibly at an additional price you could be offered fight or sanitary documentation optional at an additional price you could just not be offered any phyto-sanitary documentation at all and a lot of growers do actually publicly state that they don't offer this documentation as well one thing i must stress if you are going to buy a plant at this stage in the timeline please please please buy your plant with phytosanitary documentation i know red plants are expensive okay and i know you might think that you're making a saving and doing this but you're actually taking a huge gamble if you purchase a plant without this documentation the required documentation if customs in your country inspect and discover there is a plant inside the box it will be destroyed and in the majority of cases the grower will not refund you for it something to consider here is that in order for a plant to pass inspection the roots of the plant need to be treated pretty aggressively this process usually involves scrubbing the roots with a brush and dipping the plant in reasonably harsh chemicals to remove any biological life or medium on the plant speaking from experience here different plants handle this process differently some plants are reasonably okay some plants can go into quite severe shock other plants can completely rot the root either on arrival or maybe up to two weeks after import honestly it's a little bit of a lottery so when you do buy your plants direct from a grower they will have nothing on the root at all now some growers ship their roots wrapped in sphagnum moss others do it in tissue paper it really depends on the country of where you're buying the plants from as to how they are shipped to you from experience moss is a hell of a lot better than tissue paper from experience this whole process can take about a week from the plant being removed from the media it's in and sat bare root until it's actually inspected and shipped which does pose the risk of the plant drying out in the air when you combine all these factors i've mentioned when you do buy direct from the grower you are going to have a significant rehab time on your plant that's because the nature of the way these plants are prepared they can decline really quickly that could be on arrival it could be before they even arrive or it could be up to two weeks after they've arrived buying direct from the grower is cheaper but the responsibility and the rehabilitation of the plant is placed solely on yourself if the plant dies the responsibility is placed on you and as i mentioned before some growers do not a lot of them actually refund you if this happens buying plants in this way is widely considered at your own risk unfortunately we're not done yet because depending on where you are from in the world you might have to pay some extra fees this does not mean that you've paid your money for your plant and your phyto-sanitary documentation and that's it not only that but there's extra paperwork required sometimes now it's different from country to country for example in the usa you don't need any kind of import permit if you are buying 10 plants or less whereas in canada if you want to buy one single plant you do legally require an import permit so as i say it totally depends on where you're from but you might need additional paperwork and you might not be aware of it as for the uk the uk now requires all commercial and personal importers to be registered and every single shipment coming into the country should be notified and inspected failure to pre-notify and have all the required information in place will result in significant delays sometimes by two weeks or more i don't need to tell you what that might mean providing you've done everything that is required for you to do plants are inspected upon arrival to the destination country at which point the plant health agency in that country open and inspect your shipment documents are then checked and additional fees are issued you could also be liable for further import duty and tax i've touched on this earlier but one final thing to note here if something goes wrong in this process nine times out of ten the grower will not refund you if a plan gets delayed in customs you probably won't get a refund if a plant certainly doesn't have the documentation you will not get a refund if the plan dies on arrival you probably won't get a refund buying plants in this way can be a bit of a gamble and it is considered at your own risk now we've covered the shipping process we can move on to private sellers and plant shops which ones you could potentially purchase from and which one might be best for you let's start with private sellers private sellers can usually be found on instagram etsy ebay or facebook ebay and etsy give you more security over your purchase whereas facebook or instagram do not the only way you can have any kind of protection over instagram and facebook is if you use paypal and you use the goods and services option not the friends and family option if you do use the goods and services option via paypal then paypal can essentially fight your case if something goes wrong whether it was lost in the post whether the seller missold you or just anything of the sort that said many private sellers unfortunately will not permit you to use this option and will instead insist that you use the friends and family option there are as you might expect pros and cons from buying from a private seller i'm gonna label this one as a pro rather than a con because i think it ultimately is a pro and that is that private sellers will offer a wide range of sizes of plants it's not one consistent size so if you're wanting to save a little bit of money on buying whatever plant it is that you want you can probably find a cutting of said plant for much cheaper so in that sense your flexibility on pricing is pretty good pricing can vary a lot with private sellers you might get a great deal you might pay slightly more than what you wanted to this is usually just dependent on the value that the seller puts on their own plant in terms of refunds it's completely up to the seller as to what they want to do this is assuming that you've paid friends and family as i mentioned before if you paid via goods and services you have some options there let's just assume that you haven't for one moment it's really down to the seller whether they want to refund you feel free to ask your seller on what they consider to be grounds for a refund i.e ask them on their terms of sale before you purchase your plant that way you're a little bit more in the know about the whole process regarding the documentation you need for your plant private sellers often can't or won't provide any kind of documentation this includes phyto sanitary documentations or planned passports this is usually because the inspection and registration fees that are required to be able to do this are quite costly however as a standard anyone in the uk or eu for example that is shipping a plan for profit i.e money has been exchanged needs to be registered with their own country's plant health agency and be registered to supply a plant passport with the shipped plant [Music] if they do not do this they are unfortunately breaking the law and just to be crystal clear this does apply to private sellers as well as shops technically this means anyone selling plans privately in facebook groups and stating that they will not be providing any documentation is trading illegally even selling plants within the uk because i don't know how many people know this if you are shipping a plant from one person to another within the uk you are still required by law to produce a planned passport otherwise it is illegal it goes without saying therefore that if you do choose to purchase a plan from a private seller that is not providing you the right documentation then it does still pose a risk as if plants are found in customs the same applies to the the first shipping process that we covered in that if customs find this plant there's no documentation it will be destroyed whether the seller refunds you is up to them unless you've used the payment protection let's move on now to the pros and cons of buying from a plant shop [Music] this option is usually but not always considered the most expensive way to buy your houseplant as i mentioned at the start of the video plan shops buy plants from the grower and then add on a margin the reason they add on this margin is as follows the first reason is that the shop has already undergone the process of buying direct from the grower and paid all taxes and import fees associated with that shipment they've undertaken all the risks we've covered so far and they've also probably accounted for losses in stock along the way so any plants lost in that shipment they were dead on arrival or died very quickly soon after those losses have been accounted for and likely included in the margin of that specific plant the second reason is that the plant shop should have acclimated plants fully this usually takes place over weeks or even in some cases a few months this takes time energy and of course money the cost of feeding heating watering these plants all must be covered as expenses in order for this shop to turn a profit the third reason and this won't necessarily apply to every plant shop out there but if the plant shop is able to ship internationally they will have already paid a huge amount in inspection and registration phase with the appropriate authorities because it's quite costly in order to print a vital sanitary certificate or a planned passport costs money as well on top of that this usually costs money per certificate these are usually hidden costs within the price of your plant it's quite possible that when you buy from a plant shop they will have included all these fees except perhaps phyto-sanitary documentation which they may mark separately the fourth and final reason and again this does not necessarily apply to all plant shops is that a lot of shops tend to have a guarantee on their plants what this means is say you buy the plant and for whatever reason it gets lost in shipping it doesn't make it to you it makes it to you in really bad condition or within a certain period of time of you being in receipt of the plant the plant declines more than what is considered reasonable shipping stress a lot of plant shops will either refund the item or replace the item this is usually dependent on stock levels another thing to note about plant shops and again this could be a pro or a con depending on what you're looking for but plant shops tend to order a more standardized size of plant there aren't many sizing options depending on what you're looking for this is going to make your purchase more easy or more difficult now i'm not really going to cover flipping in this video i'm going to gloss over it because honestly this is either a video in itself or it's definitely part of another video that i have planned for you guys but i do want to say a few words about it now [Music] for anyone that is unaware of what the word flipping means within the planned community it basically means buying a plant from wherever it is and immediately shipping it out to somebody else without any kind of acclimation or care towards the plant flipping is not accepted in the plant community in any shape or form as more often than not plants die within a few days to two weeks of arrival at your doorstep as of course they've undergone the stress of shipping twice within a short space of time often within a week of the plant being in the seller's possession flipping can be witnessed in the private seller community and yes unfortunately it can also be witnessed in plant shops now there are ways to kind of tell if your plant may have been flipped i'm not going to get into it now that's probably a whole video on that process if you'd like to see a video on that please leave a comment below one final thing to talk about involving private sellers and more often than not shops is the subject of pre-sale you may have seen adverts here and there on the internet of shops basically offering up plants for what is called pre-sale these shops are essentially funding the purchase of the big box of plants that they buy from the grower with your money rather than their own this is usually because they have no capital in their business in this sense they're basically acting not as a shop but as a broker they're acting as a middleman between you and the grower now sometimes shops will acclimate the stock they receive sometimes they won't this can pose a huge risk to you if you choose this option this is mainly because as i mentioned before the shop is using your money for the purchase and not the room this means if something goes wrong for example the box of plans they order arrives and let's just say they're all dead they cannot refund you because they have no money to refund you and i know that sounds very unfortunate but it does happen and there have been some quite notable cases in our community where this has happened there have even been some cases where shops have assured their customers ahead of time that if something goes wrong they will be refunded and not to worry and something has gone wrong the customers have asked for their money back and the shop basically said no a lot of customers never got their money back so in that sense it's an absolutely huge risk and honestly established shops do not choose this option an established plan shop will not offer pre-sale this is usually because they are very familiar with the import process and they're aware of the amount of stock they are probably inevitably going to lose in this process that way they could never promise to deliver a certain amount of plans to a certain amount of customers it's literally impossible to predict so many factors can affect this whether it's weather delays due to eg the pandemic career delays anything of the sort if you want to participate in a pre-sale that's totally up to you just please be aware of the fact that the company involved in this pre-sale may not have the money to pay you back if everything doesn't go as planned so we talked about the shipping process earlier on from the grower direct to shop or direct to a private individual i'm now going to talk about the shipping process from predominantly a shop to a private individual because i do believe this process is slightly different from the first process that we mentioned [Music] shipping from a private seller or a shop depending on the rules of your country could mean that you receive your plants in generally much better condition than that of shipping direct from the grower for example if a plant is shipped from somewhere much more local to you i.e within your country then the plant might still be in soil it might have zero root disturbance which undoubtedly will lead to a better transit and a much less rehab time if there even is any rehab time for shops that do ship plants bare root some but not all plant shops do grow their plants and prepare them in such a way that is non-aggressive towards the root system ia no scrubbing no super harsh chemicals this of course again means the same thing it means there is going to be less rehab time on your plant and the plant should arrive generally in much better condition in addition to this both private sellers and shops do offer you a lot more flexibility in terms of shipping often you are offered standard or express delivery with private sellers you can very often pick your own delivery methods and even sometimes your own career with a plan shop you're nearly always offered an express option with your plants when you purchase them at checkout again this means less transit time less stress on the plant less rehab time [Music] the last stage in this process is of course the plant has arrived at your doorstep and no matter where you choose to buy your plant from your plant may or may not require some rehabilitation time if you're interested in this i'm not going to cover it in today's video i actually have a full video on how to rehab your house plan after shipping a lot of people do tell me that they use it all the time and it's pretty helpful so if you're interested in some things you could do to make that process a little bit more smoother for you and this does still account for if you bought direct from a grower the tips still apply please look at that link in the description and give that a watch you may find it helps so we've talked about an awful lot so far and i think now it's time to really summarize the pros and cons of buying at each point in our little timeline of the plan being at the growers nursery to essentially reaching your doorstep [Music] so when you boil it down you can buy plants in three different ways those three ways are essentially number one which is direct from the grower to yourself number two from a private seller and number three from a plant shop let's start with direct from the grower so a plus side of buying direct from the grower is that the plants are going to be generally a little bit cheaper than what you would pay from a private seller or the prices of a plant shop unfortunately the phyto sanitary preparation and general shipping process is often pretty aggressive and quite detrimental to the health of your plan this obviously means that the rehabilitation time compared with that of a private seller or a shop is going to be significantly longer refunds or replacements are not usually an option when buying direct as it's widely considered at your own risk typically shipping times can be much longer as well whether that be from the purchase to the actual shipping of the plant or just the general shipping process some shipments from growers take up to two weeks to reach you so that is definitely something to factor in a general point to consider and this actually applies to anything on this list but i'm probably going to keep repeating myself additional import fees and taxes may be required when you buy one of these plants in this manner next we have buying from a private seller a good pro it i mean this could be a pro or a con as i've mentioned before but i'm going to include it as a pro and that is that the plans that are offered to you vary quite a lot in size typically speaking this as i mentioned before could mean that you save a little bit of money wherever you want to if you buy a cutting rather than a full plant a con of this is that payment protection is not often guaranteed as i say some sellers do a lot of sellers don't the best thing to do of course is to ask your seller unfortunately buying from a private seller nine times out of ten documentation is not actually issued and of course this is illegal and if your plans are discovered in customs then of course they will be destroyed another thing is that refunds are usually done the discretion of the seller and replacements are not usually an option this is usually due to the fact that the private seller doesn't have 10 of whatever plant in stock they only have the one cutting that they propagated themselves points to consider again additional import fees and taxes may be required not only that but this is the first entry point of essentially flipping which means that the plant may or may not be acclimated before you actually purchase it which basically means the plant has an increased chance of not making it of dying last but not least purchasing from a plant shop so a pro of purchasing from a plant shop again it could be a con but i'm labeling it as a pro is that the plant quality and size is often a lot more standardized there's usually not always but usually a lot more of the same thing to go around so the availability is generally a little bit better where documentation is concerned as long as the shop is trading legally the proper documentation should be supplied to you this could just be phyto-sanitary documentation this could be customs forms this could be planned passports it could be some other document that is required by your planned health inspection agency when buying from a plant shop payment protection if done through the proper channels is often guaranteed if something goes wrong paypal is at your disposal or your card company is also at your disposal refunds and replacements are usually but not always of course an option dependent on stock levels but as i mentioned before there is a higher availability of stock so you have more of a chance of getting a replacement if something goes wrong with your plant an obvious corn of plant shops as i mentioned earlier is that they are more expensive than buying direct from a grower sometimes more expensive than buying privately sometimes not more expensive buying privately that is totally down to the shop's price and the private seller's price points to consider again to repeat myself sorry additional import fees may or may not be required the plant may or may not be acclimated yes flipping does unfortunately happen with plant shops and i didn't put this in a pro because i'm not fully aware of how many plant shops do this but it is possible that you may get a further guarantee on your plant after purchase it may last a few days within you receiving your plans so it may last 14 days it may last 10 days it may last seven days it may last three days sometimes those extra few days are what can really set your purchase apart as i said it's not a required thing of a shop and not every shop might have this but it's a point to consider so we've covered a lot in this video but it's now time to summarize essentially everything we've talked about here today there is generally speaking a timeline or a series of steps involved when a rare plant comes available on the market and it leaves the grower to yourself whereabouts on this timeline or at which stage in the process you wish to buy a plant is solely up to you and as long as the person or party selling you the plan is operating legally then there is no right or wrong way to buy a plant it really boils down to if you could summarize everything i've said in this video in a couple of sentences it basically boils down to do you want to spend less money and take more risk or do you want to spend more money and take less risk and if you look back at every single stage that we've talked about you will notice that the ratio of cost versus risk changes for each point in this process so really it's about the risk that you perceive okay for you and as i've said before as long as whoever it is that is selling you these plants are operating legally then there is no right or wrong answer the aim of this video is really just to shed light on the general process and to basically deliver you your options because ultimately it's down to you what you want to do i just wanted to give you a broad overview of the situation and to really give you the tools to make your own decisions on what you think is best for you if you have any questions on the things we've covered in today's video please feel free to leave a comment down below and either myself or a lovely member of the comment section will be sure to help you out if i found anything useful a current video that exists of mine that really helps in explaining some of the terms in this video or for example it's just helpful generally like the rehabbing plants after shipping video i've linked them all down in the description so you can just take a look at that if you like this video please leave a like down below if you'd like to see any more of my content then please feel free to subscribe thank you all for watching and i will see you in the next video bye you

Channel: Kaylee Ellen

Views: 53,661

Rating: 4.9353313 out of 5

Keywords: kaylee ellen, kaylee ellen plants, rare plants, rare houseplants, how to buy rare plants, how to send plants in the mail, how are rare plants shipped, plant flipping, plant poaching, how to acclimate houseplants, risks of rare plants, journey of a rare plant, phytosanitary document, plants without phyto, plant shops vs private sellers, plant shops vs nurseries, buying houseplants online, are rare plants worth it, laws on shipping plants, shipping plants after brexit

Id: yniJpkwTq8s

Length: 33min 28sec (2008 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 05 2021