“Collecting can be a kind of pain in love,” journalist Susan Orlean wrote at the end of the last century. “If you start collecting living beings, you pursue anything imperfect, and even if you manage to locate and possess them, there is no sure that they die or change. “
Orlean’s sightings were of collectors of unconditional orchids, others who had once been “apparently normal” before cultivating the will to literally threaten everything to get their hands on the rarest members of the orchid family. Twenty-five years later, plant obsessives are still out there, but instead of, say, developing flowers in pillow instances in a midday raid on a swamp, they can send DM to whatever they do, sign up for a long nursery waiting list, or place a tempting offer on an auction site.
Last weekend, an unwheenctioned New Zealander paid NZD 8,150 (equivalent to $5,291) for an “Rhaphidophora tetrasconsistent withma extremely infrequent” on the Trade Me auction site. The sale set a new record for the most expensive indoor plant ever sold on the platform (and the final acquisition is worth around $1325 according to the blade).
The variety of the plant, a cellular mutation that makes the leaves appear white, pink or yellow, in this case, is what prompted that four-figure label. “A plant will produce a leaf that looks a little different, because the leaves do not contain chlorophyll,” said Jesse Waldman, director of marketing and e-commerce for Pistils Nursery in Portland, Oregon. “If you take a cutting and propagate it, you can expect [the variety] to continue, but this kind of mutation is not very stable. Many plants will revert to their forged green form, which made it a bit more difficult to produce in giant quantities. . “
The weekend auction marked the third time this year that an indoor plant set a new sales record at Trade Me; Rhaphidophora even surpassed the value of a ‘compact’ fleshy Hoya with a cream and yellow pamphlet that sold for $4,225 in June, and a Monstera aurea panacea that charged $3,726 while writing this article.
What prompted this interest in high-value rarities? It is based on who you are talking to. A gardener compared to collecting valuable handbags, calling it “exclusive, demonstration and ridiculous”. But for Dr. Bridget Behe, a professor of horticulture at Michigan State University and an expert in horticultural marketing, it’s just The Econ 101.
“Plants, like humans, can be a bit fickle. Social media can help create calls where the source is low, creating rare plants, ”he said. “FOMO is genuine and some other people need that plant for emotional expression, so it increases value through demand. Quite undeniable economy. With that said, once an amazing plant propagator cracks the code for how to propagate the ready plantArray, there are more plants for sale and the value drops. “
Aroids such as monstera, philodendron and pothos have certainly benefited from their Insta ubiquity, driven through plant influencers (sigh), hashtags and unboxing videos. “Six years ago, I asked the user I was buying [for Pistils] at the time if we could bring in a variety of monsters, and she said, ‘They’re hard to sell,'” Waldman said. “Go through here and I’d say we get two to 10 emails a week asking about this factory and Instagram DDs almost every day. When we get one, I have to yell at it. Put it on social media because the volume attracts and the volume of calls is too much to handle.
But not everyone who navigates installed plant-based accounts or visits their local nursery is interested in a multi-month rental cut in several flexes; Most of us love indoor plants. According to the National Gardening Association’s most recent national lawn survey, the number of 18- to 34-year-olds now participates in “gardening activities,” adding developing indoor plants. As a result, retail sales on the lawn The category reached a new high of $47. 8 billion last year and, in line with family spending on plants, rose to an average of $503, figures expected to continue to rise.
“I was absolutely blind,” said Enid Offolter, the owner of NSE Tropicals in Plantation, Florida, and a self-proclaimed “horticultural facilitator. “”I think the market was at its maximum capacity 3 years ago, and then each and every year is more intense. I can’t let this go on. “
Offolter is a valid celebrity in the plant world; It has more than 85,000 fans on Instagram and NSE Tropicals estimates that it has sold more than 140,000 plants over the more than 20 years. She says it’s hard for her to stay in stock, and I don’t think she’s joking, not when she can have literally thousands of other people on a waiting list for rarities like Philodendron joepii or Philodendron lynamii. “I often have so many other people who need a specific plant, I don’t know who to sell it to,” he says.
In those cases, you can simply auction them off on the NSE Tropicals website. At the time of this writing, the best deals ranged from $ 61 for an Anthurium polystictum to $ 4,000 for (spoiler alert) a Monstera adansonii panacea. “Every day the prices surprise me,” he added.
Behe is more astonished by a less tangible, but no less genuine, feature of this generation of collectors. “I think the real wonder is the emotional connection that many millennials have with their plants,” he said. “They are young or pet friendly, yet many millennials call [their plants] and care for them intensely. I am amazed by the increased popularity of indoor plants, but I am a little amazed by this strong emotional connection.
But before someone inevitably blames Generation Y for inflating the indoor plant market, it’s probably worth noting that this is nothing new. Nearly a century before Orlean wrote the first bankruptcy of The Orchid Thief, the rich Victorians were so fascinated with orchids. and so willing to spend cash to buy them, that his fascination is known as “orchidelirum”.
Photo: Jesse Waldman / Pistils Nursery
“There are other people who collect orchids like others make coins or postage stamps, paying gigantic sums for individual plants,” a newspaper wrote in 1904. “It is said that an amount at most twice the maximum value paid by a tulip at the time of the famous tulip fashion, last year $ 5,200 [almost $150,000 in 2020 U. S. dollars] was paid in London for one plant, and another’s inventory costs $10,000 [$288,000 today]. Sir Trevor Lawrence’s meeting in Dorking, England. However, its cost has not been tested through sale, as the owner grows orchids only for his own pleasure. “(Sir Trevor, we saloy him). )
At the beginning of the 20th century, the creditors of Cyprus’ wacky orchids were even accused of hunting one variety to the brink of extinction. No one has ever accused today’s #plantparents for taking things that far, for now, but there are still downsides. to the expansion of the scarcity market. Offolter says its demanding situations, from the suffering to locate plants, to an increase in the number of scammers “trying to make a quick buck” by promoting substandard versions, to “massive amounts of emails. ” about what is available.
“As much as I love that other people love plants, study special plants and get all this specialized knowledge, the problem is that other people can essentially rate what they need for them, and I think that costs a lot of other people. have access to those factories, “Waldman added. “I look forward to seeing them in higher production so that more people can enjoy them. I think plants are available to everyone, because they are a source of joy. “
And pursuing something imperfect, after all, however, that would possibly be the goal.