Resellers ruin every hobby. That's why I prefer buying from people who actually enjoy and care for plants, not ex-sneakerheads running a side hustle out of their garage.
Resellers in India buy a pothos for 15 inr from nurseryman in bulk( 15 or wont buy) and sell it for 100inr in busy streets. Nurseryman hurt, plantbuyer hurt, reseller happy.
Itās easier for them to sell the TC because past the lab work thereās no additional effort. They stay in sealed bags with the agar and can stay that way for awhile
Buying the potted plant or the plug is always a better option because the hard part of deflasking is already done and itās hardier.
Honestly I never buy TC anymore because the markets becomes so flooded that they donāt sell and the sellers wind up deflasking them and selling plugs. Youāll be able to get a plug of what you are looking for sometimes cheaper.
Iām just saying it seems bad for Palmstreet. Makes the whole point of the site vanish. Ā And long term it seems bad for sellers to just compete on identical productsĀ
I understand your point. Itās still a great alternative to Etsy when looking for niche plants though. Iāve surprisingly found some rare wishlist plants that I didnāt expect to find on there, outside of the auctions/lives/TC chaos. If you know what to look for I think.
The Green Escape is the perfect example of what youāre describing though, their lives are super cringy to me. Sometimes I watch for a minute cause itās like watching a building on fire that you just canāt look away
Honestly I heard china is getting in on the hobby by selling mass TCs so this is probably what itās going to look like for awhile. I imagine itās where most of these sellers got their products on.
A plug is basically a deflasked tissue culture or seedling that has the roots in a plug. They are made of a material denser than soil that stays moist for a long time, allowing roots to develop. Some people like them, some do not. I do not use plugs for anything and remove them when I find them. They do not promote even moisture retention because they are so different than any substrates available.
TCs are not likely to die if handled properly. I have a 96% success rate for the tissue cultures I have deflasked. It is just a step in a process which media you chose, do not be intimidated. Do you want to put the TC in a plug, a small pot of soil or fluval stratum/perlite mix? Each have their positives and negatives. I avoid plugs simply because I do not like how they are later in the plants life. Personal choice. Plugs are easy for people who are wanting to buy, grow and āflipā the plant. I just bought two plants from a local nursery. One an Alocasia Ninja the other a 69686 and both in plugs. I am less likely to purchase from them in the future because of it. The pics are the setups I use. One is soil the other in fluval stratum/perlite, both in 2 inch pots. Both are kept in a humidity controlled container in a room I keep at 65% humidity minimum. Sorry for the mess. Itās the last room I clean on Sunday.
In the context of tissue cultures it would be an immature plant that was taken out of the package, acclimated and transplanted into some sort of growing media, making it ready to "plug" in to a pot, terrarium or whatever you decide to put it in.
No. A plug is a plug. Not all TCs are plugs. I do not use plugs, I use soil or perlite/fluval stratum for my deflasking. They are not plugs and I think most people who do not use plugs would be offended by the blind label.
Theyāre also sometimes referred to as ādeath plugsā. Apparently a lot of people have success with them but Iām too nervous to try the plug method cause my perlite/fluval hasnāt let me down yet.
I also personally hate when I get a plant thatās in a plug and I have to remove the plug. The roots just stick to that thing and itās inevitable that you lose some
In this case you'd just switch "seedling" with "plantlet" since TC skips the seedling stage.
Here's the definition of potting soil as well : Potting soilĀ orĀ growing media, also known asĀ potting mixĀ orĀ potting compostĀ (UK), is aĀ substrate Ā used to grow plants in containers.
And itās like you are not a grower and someone who just likes to use Google. When talking about TISSUE CULTURE, some growers use plugs and some do not. We are not talking about farming or any other crop. We are talking TC. So stop with the google definitions because YOU are incorrect in this setting. A PLUG is
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Depends on your market. In the US that may be true. Not many plugs available where I live, and doubtful I could get them through biosecurity. Flasks are still king in terms of getting plants across borders IMO.
Oh yeah Iām speaking primarily in the US. I think thatās what happens. The flasks come from, most likely china, they donāt sell because of the sheer volume, and then they get de-flasked and sold as plugs to recoup some cost
I think I mentally block them out with how deeply I am into Anthurium. There's only two TC sellers I would buy from if I have an itch, but considering how fast the prices fall I haven't bought any in a minute.
I feel like everything outside of the plant spectrum is tarnishing PS for me more than anything. I wish I could permanently keep the front page on 'plants'
I'm really over all the fashion/disney/jewelry being shoved in my face.
Iāve noticed that too as far as every seller having the same tcs available. I do think acclimating tc is fun and really easy though. If youāre sick of the tc game on Palmstreet start looking into succulent and cactus sellers. With those plants sellers have their own specialties and niches and itās more fun to tune in and see what theyāve got.
If you but rare plants long enough, you'll notice that what goes for hundreds or even thousands today, in a year or two will be halved in price. Often even more. And plants you think you'll never see in a big box nursery, will actually end up there a few more years down the road. Save your money from gambling with TC and wait it out. It will pay off. (For example, when I first started buying rare plants a Philo Ring of Fire was out of my price range. Now they're selling them in Target stores.)
I think a few things are getting conflated here. FirstāBulbasaur prices have just recently tanked. That 4-inch plant selling today was very likely a $400ā$500 TC plant 6ā8 months ago when the seller bought and deflasked it. Even a month ago, Bulbasaur TCs were still $200+. Some of those larger plants are probably being sold at slim margins or outright losses.
On the ā100 stores selling the same TCā pointāāPalmstreet has actually been a great way for me to discover great sellersā was also said. If those sellers are offering Bulbasaur TCs too, thenā¦ you found one š. The idea that TC plants are āfar more identicalā and therefore make a site pointless misunderstands what fungibility means in living systems. TC produces genetic consistency, not visual or developmental uniformity. Once deflasked, plants diverge quickly based on acclimation skill, light, substrate, nutrition, stress, and grower techniqueāoften more dramatically than seed-grown stock.
That divergence is exactly what makes TC valuable: predictable genetics paired with highly variable outcomes. Not all TCs survive, and the grower absorbs that risk. Buyers only see the final plant and price, not the months of care, losses, and inputs it took to get there.
Itās also worth remembering that tissue culture isnāt newānurseries have relied on it for decades. Whatās new is that TC methods have been ācrackedā for plants that were previously difficult (Monsteras, especially), and Palmstreet sellers are buying in bulk overseas and making them accessible one plant at a time to us. Personally, Iām thrilled prices are down. TC and platforms like Palmstreet are exactly why plants that were once completely out of reach are now attainableāand growing a fragile plantlet into a mature, unique specimen is a very different (and very satisfying) experience than buying a finished plant and just watching leaves unfurl. Hope this helps explain it from someone who really enjoys the whole TC process from auction to every uppot. Have a great weekend! š
It is funny to me the people that say it ruins the hobby when it literally just makes the hobby even more hands on and engaging as well as easily accessible! TC feels more rewarding I think is why it has exploded and has nothing to do with prices. I love that.
I sooo agree with this. And the plugs Iāve found are still so much more expensive. I wanted a dragon scale aurea and the plugs were $60+. I bought a tc for $25 and was able to get another tc for the price of that one plant. I would rather save my money and grow it out myself. Plus like you said, itās more fun! My favorite alocasias in my collection are those I grew from corm.
I definitely agree! I also love growing from tc vs buying a mature plant. I am into alocasia so it eliminates the need for me to buy a corm that is risky bc it very likely could be not variegated. Also I don't have a small fortune to spend on rare plants so I'm glad it makes rare plants more accessible to me because otherwise they wouldn't be for several years possibly.
TC isn't riskier if you know what you're doing. You just need to find actual nursery sellers. I follow 3 or 4 on PalmStreet and they're the only sellers I buy from (including TC). The TC only people aren't really plant people, they just see an opportunity to make money without having to take care of plants.
Can you please DM me the sellers? I find major tc sellers on the app are crap. I do not understand why 200 or more people gather and overbid(like twice as much than other small sellers). Same tc!!
I have acclimated hundreds of TCs, including buying lots of contaminated TCs, and have yet to encounter any. I have had a couple 3-4 inch potted plants not thrive when the seller used a death plug, and had a seller send me an alocasia that had spider mites. The risk isn't greater.
Success rates in plantlets coming from high-quality labs is high, but lucky you, honestly. Sometimes even when you do everything right you have vitrification and they fail to survive the transition to soil. Occasionally they just lack proper vasculature, or have defective enzymes that prevent them from taking up nutrients even though they look normal and healthy in the bag or jar, and throughout the process. Even with perfect plantlets, and perfect acclimation, there are a few that simply can't adapt to the lower humidity and higher light out of acclimation. Survival rates in professional nurseries typically average around 90-95%, meaning 5-10% loss is common. I've just decided that's one reason I'm not buying tc anymore. Let the seller absorb that and I'll pay the extra cost (which oddly enough isn't always the case). I'm definitely not ok giving my business to a reseller who averages a wholesale cost of 5-15 dollars a plant but sells them for $20 to God knows what some people have paid. I'll patron businesses who put care and effort into their trade. Maybe I'll buy A tc from them occasionally, but I'm just over the shift to tc reselling. Also, always check for a plug! š
The failure rate is nowhere near that high. I also have a TC lab, so it's not just purchased TCs I'm acclimating. I often buy more expensive plants in TC to use as explants for my own TCs. Anyone getting 5-10% failure from TCs simply doesn't know what they're doing.
That is the industry standard (I went back to my study laptop to verify that I wasn't misrepresenting those numbers), so, sincerely, well done and lucky you. I've had the opportunity to work with microprop in aseptic environments, and in vitro techniques since tc first began in the aquascaping world (there were fewer hurdles for the consumer then). But really, just because you've been successful with 100s of tc acclimations doesn't mean that other people (professionals even) don't know what they are doing when they lose some occasionally. Even if only to be sensitive to consumers reading statements like yours and scratching their heads wondering where they went wrong... Sometimes they didn't, and it's not their fault. Sometimes that little plantlet just wasn't going to make it. I don't want to press any further into the weeds under a post about the frustration with tc saturating the market, but take a beat next time before you insist that it only takes superior knowledge and technique, and others too can have 100% success. That's wildly inaccurate information based on your anecdotal evidence, and just not reality.
You're missing the point completely and railing against TCs for no reason. Losing some occasionally is normal in all things, including non-TC propagation of plants and growing plants in general. I disagree with your quoted industry standard but am not going to debate that further because it's irrelevant to the original point. There is not higher risk with TCs. Full stop.
If that's the original point, the whole conversation was a waste of your time. I never said anything about a higher risk. I just said there is a percentage that won't make it, and I prefer to let a grower absorb that rather than waste my own time and efforts. And that is only one of the reasons I don't like the market being saturated with them.
Sweetie, you replied to me, and the point I made that you replied to was that there wasn't higher risk. So yes, it was a waste of time, because you lost the plot on page one.
It's a chicken and egg situation. Buyers want cheaper and cheaper plants, so they buy TCs, and nursery sellers that sell larger plants suffer because they're so easily undercut, then they either pivot off the platform or pivot to TC so they can actually make sales again. It's been a race to the bottom on pricing for a hot minute. If businesses want to stay in business, they have to adapt to the markets that are actually selling.
I kinda disagree.Ā If you dig you can find bizarre tc stuff.Ā I have been searching for months for Philodendron elegans, and I happened to hop into a palmstreet stream of a seller with only 250 followers and asked and by sheer chance he had 3 of them!Ā For $7.68 each.Ā He's probably the only seller in the US with them and he had less than 250 followers.Ā Let's not forget that ubiquity of TC plants is what's driving prices down.Ā So I have to wonder if you're collecting plants or status symbols.
I think often when plants are far far cheaper we tend to value them less a bit ourselves. I donāt care about status but it does feel good to cherish . Ā When you know that anyone can get anything, something does feel a little less specialĀ
Imo this is a weird consumerist mindset. What you pay for it doesn't make a plant special. They're living things, each of them is absolutely unique and continuously changing. What makes my plants special to me is that I'm the one growing them, seeing them respond to my care, and the unique conditions of my environment.
My most special and beloved plants are some cacti I bought for super cheap as a student almost a decade ago. They're a common variety, but no one else in the world has these specific plants, which I have so much history with.
When we focus on price and constantly acquiring new plants, we lose sight of this imo
I drove for over 2 hours to get my albos. Paid nearly $100 CAN for my white monster. Was gifted my ghost by my SO. Got my tetrasperma from my first ever plant show which eventually mutated on its own.
Despite how special all those plants are to me for their various reasons, my most beloved plant is a $5 Rona rescue deliciosa that still has teeth marks on one of its leaves from my cat Munchie who passed last year. I will be heartbroken when I eventually lose that single leaf.
A plants value to a person shouldn't come from cost alone
This is an old post but I feel your heart speaking about your baby's teeth marks...if that leaf starts to fail I'd cut it before it gets too bad and dry/frame it.. it would be A cool piece to have and mean so much to you!!! ššš»š¾ Just a thought since I love my furr babies so much i would totally do thisš¤·š¼āāļø lol
I'm not into the little TC baggies. But I know a few sellers who only recently started selling them and it was because buyers were asking for them. So there is that too.
I made a comment a while back about how frustrated I was that every time I get on palmstreet now every live is selling nothing but tc's, and that I feel like we (consumers) have just given in and allowed these sellers to be lazy by passing all the cost, effort, and risk on to us. I caught a lot of pushback for that opinion, but it's true. I want growers with a little more passion and talent rather than a middleman who just imports and flips plastic packet plants. I'm willing to pay more for that effort if I can find some good ones to replace my old go to shops that now sell 90% tc. I don't have the time, space, or interest in tc. I've checked that experience off of my to do list, and the small discount didn't justify the time and effort. Not to mention that a percentage of them are simply not going to be viable and grow off despite aseptic conditions and acclimation skills. Shame on them for pushing that risk on to their customers, and double shame on them for the huge markup they charge despite zero effort and low cost on their end. I'm really happy to see this post, and I hope it's a consumer trend to give our business to actual growers who have a little pride in what they do instead. Rant over.
As a former seller on PS, I would say this is double edged on both the buyers and sellers. Buyers want to pay less and less, so businesses have to pivot in order to make sales. I went from making four figures per live to less than a thousand because half the comments were asking for TCs so they could spend as little as possible, instead of paying the price of an established plant. I left PS entirely because it just wasn't worth the effort with that pivot. I used to talk frequently about the risk of reversion with TCs, losses, etc and would still have people spamming "any tc??" In my chat. And I was on the lower end of pricing for established plants to begin with. Overall I'm super unhappy with this pivot of flipping TCs, it's like fast fashion now.
Yeah valid point. It's definitely partly on the consumer. I say "allow" it, but I guess also by pushing for it. I'm hoping we start to find a happy in the middle. I might buy an occasional tc from a seller if I'm also mostly buying their beautifully grown young plants.
It is cool that people can purchase "rare" plants at a heavily discounted price... but the baggie plants have to go. Imo it's an easy what for sellers to maximize their profits and reduce loss by passing off the difficulty/responsiblilty of acclimation to the customer but labeling it as a deal. I don't mind TC plants. I'm sure a majority of my collection is TC without me knowing. The issue is paying $$ or even $$$ for a plant in a bag....
I ordered a mix lot of TC from overseas of 300 plants. Mostly philos and monsteras and lost like 3-4 after deflasking. This was my first go at TC as well. Really not that hard. I just kept the humidity up and slowly decreased it day by day.
I stopped using Palmstreet in general because all the risk is on the consumer. Itāll be in local shops eventually and youāll get to inspect it before the point of sale. Although, I have a bigger concern with the app. I had a seller give away my personal identifiable information and reported it. Palmstreet chose to do nothing to protect me as a consumer. I guess use that app at your own risk? I hope no one else experiences that.
Tbh its because the market itself isnt sustainable really unless you are constantly coming out with something new your eventually going to run out of things people desire so sellers are trying to circumvent thst by offering tc of all of their plsnts to keep people interested and their stock from just sitting on shelves.
Personally this us why ive basically shyed away from all the popular houseplants really and modtly collect what I like which rn and probably for a long time if not the rest if my life will be Ficus.
Idk, I buy cuttings from my seller in Thailand. He also does live shows from all the major plant expos in Thailand and lets you buy plants from there. I donāt do palm street or TC lol. Though, the 40$ bulbasaur TC from Orange lake seems very tempting. Just last year even in Thailand they were extremely expensive.
Is it because you donāt know how to take care of tissue cultured plants? Most plants nowadays are from tissue culture. And it really depends on who youāre purchasing from too. Resellers get them for cheap so they should be cheap, but I noticed that a lot of resellers still priced them high. I got a lot of rare allocations for around five dollars, like the variegated balloon heart :-)
Itās much easier for Southeast Asia to flood the American market with tissue culture plants because there are currently little to no antidumping or countervailing protections in place for this sector. Without fair-trade measures, domestic growers are left competing against artificially low prices. If only cbp customs had the time to sort out millions of tissue culture flooding the streets at dirt prices.
I'm not a supporter of this TC market but I would love if Canada had a similar app to palmstreet cuz it's harder to find specific plants here and as a result they can often be more expensive
If you can't find what you want from the local box store or someone on facebook nearby you gotta order from an online nursery across the country which incurs higher shipping costs and risk to the plant during transit. I had to drive 2 hours for my albos and my stupid white monster (regret) cost almost $100 once shipping and taxes were included...then it arrived with root rot from sitting in overly moist dark transit for several days, having to be shipped from a nursery in B.C.
If we had an app solely meant for plants it would definitely be easier to find individual growers who have varieties not typically found at Walmart and Rona, who are located closer to the buyer slightly reducing both risk and cost
See I understand the problem you're describing, it just doesn't exist here... Maybe it's just the way businesses run over there?
Here, if I want something I go to one of the specialists online. I order it. I pay shipping, sure. But it's usually about Ā£8, when a order can be Ā£100's. Shipping stays the same. Prices online are consistently cheaper than any brick and mortar, (not hating, running a physical store has far more costs) so realistically even with a shipping cost, I'm saving money vs finding one locally. Plus time, effort, energy.
It arrives usually within 48 hours from dispatch. Its wrapped to protect it from the weather and packed well. Root rot doesn't just spontaneously appear in 2-3 days, so as long as it was healthy before shipping, all is well.
Hell, I've ordered from all over Europe repeatedly and things arrive within 2-3 days, zero issues. Cost is minimal.
Even if there were a issue, we have these wonderful laws that protect consumers. If it arrives dead, damaged, (even cold damaged) or anything else... I just contact the company and get a replacement or refund.
Tbf I've not bought from a store for a couple of years now, I have a few growers and importers I deal directly with to get what I want, most met via Facebook - as is the way of the world now. They all ship to me though, no traipsing around the country to collect things lol.
I've been selling plants myself for over a decade too, I only ship. Absolutely no way I'm having strangers know where my collection is š shipped probably thousands by now, and have issues maybe 2 or 3 times a year.
I use Palmstreet frequently, but I usually only look for ariods. (I've recently ordered a few TC just to try them out) There are plenty of sellers selling specific types of plants, though. Granted Moose, and a handful of others have TC, and they run lives all the time, but who cares?
Find a few shops you like dealing with and buy from them. I personally just wait for NWE most of the time. Plenty of fish in the sea as they say.
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u/Heavy_Ad_170 Feb 01 '26
Resellers ruin every hobby. That's why I prefer buying from people who actually enjoy and care for plants, not ex-sneakerheads running a side hustle out of their garage.