Mesa Garden future?

[NM]

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[DaveW]

Mesa Gardens is known around the world for their seed lists, probably because CITES regulations have virtually killed off the export of Succulent plants from one country to another, therefore they would only really be able to sell those to the US market, though of course that is a large one.

Maybe the new owners are just sorting themselves out, but all commercial establishments prioritise what pays best or they go bankrupt. Possibly they have found seed is easier to produce than plants and has a ready market world wide?

I don't know anything about the economics of producing Succulents in the USA since you have a better climate, but our cactus nurserymen tell us they could make a lot more money if they just grew bedding plants, which only take one year to produce, than a cactus that probably takes 3-4 years before saleable and needs a heated greenhouse over winter.

With any firm you should get an acknowledgement of your order since that is only good business. Have you checked with them that they received your order, or it has not been mislaid? Anyway hope you soon get the plants you wanted.

Just looked at your link and that seems to be a pretty extensive plant list? $4.5 (£3.51p) is a bit dearer than the British market as I went to a British Cactus Mart at the weekend and the average price there for a small plant in a 2.5 inch pot was £2.50p ($3.20). However as I said our nurserymen do have to pay to heat their greenhouses over winter but then wage rates for staff are a lot cheaper in the UK than the USA.

[jp29]

Excellent post Dave!

James

[mdpillet]

I hear and share your concerns. The new owners are somewhat eccentric, and don't seem to be too knowledgeable (or at least not as much as Steven Brack was). I was very disappointed about their price hike. Seeds are often cheaper to order from Europe even when shipping to the US (with added customs risk, that is). I HOPE that this extra revenue goes toward an increase in convenience and efficiency when putting in an order. It is unacceptable to not hear back for such a long time.

Now for what bothers me about your post. First, regarding the plant list. I feel it is fully reasonable to have a shorter list this year as they are learning the ropes of owning a large business. Additionally, you claim that you ordered plants from them several months ago. Their plant list came online on April 10, 13 days ago. I got an order confirmation on April 12, with an explanation that it may be a while since Aaron Morerod will be traveling to South Africa for the entirety of May. Have you tried calling or sending them an email or Facebook message? They have been reasonably responsive with me.

Regarding CITES issues, they state on their web page the following:
"# symbol items indicates Cites 1 status items. These items require permits to leave the US. Currently as the new owners, we have started the process to acquire our own permits. We have no approximation in how long this process could be. We will update as soon as these permits are available. Until they are, we cannot export these plants/seeds. No permit is needed for domestic US orders."

And on the plant list: "*Note: no cactus plants can be shipped out of the US.
(No CITES or phytosanitary certificates at this time)"

[DaveW]

Yes cacti have gone up from when we started James. I used to pay 2/6d (12.5p) for plant in 2.5 inch pot at our local market in the 1960's and now £2.50p for the same =20 times as much!

Of course Steven Brack used to collect his own plants from habitat pre-CITES, but presumably that then stopped with stricter regulations, therefore he obviously knew more about them than somebody just taking over the firm as a commercial proposition. The former international trade in plants like the Cactaceae virtually came to a stop with CITES. Also Mexico banned not only it's plants being collected and exported for commercial purposes, but also seed. Any new Mexican novelty in the cactus line being sold outside Mexico is therefore theoretically illegal under CITES regulations, which most countries are now signatories to and supposed to enforce, since the original material was illegally collected and exported.

To quote from a post on another Cactus Web Site:-

"Any plant described or discovered in Mexico since 27th November 1997 is unlikely to have been issued permits for any form of commercial trade, so unless the seller can produce evidence (ie Cites export certification) to the contrary then it should be considered illegal.

The list includes but is not exclusive to:

Aztekium valdezii
Agave albipilosa
Escobaria abdita
Mammillaria bertholdii
Strombocactus corregidorae
Turbinicarpus graminispinus
Turbinicarpus heliae

This applies to all plant material, seed and their progeny."

Of course the above has never stopped the E. Europeans or Asians collecting and propagating them, therefore many are now becoming quite common in many collections throughout the world in spite of the ban.

[mikej]

This may be wandering from the original topic about Mesa Garden, but I always imagined that after a new discovery, some government-supported conservation organization would collect a small portion of seeds, to establish a repository; and from there, respectable commercial growers could get a permit, get seeds, and establish their own stock, without further reliance on wild plants. It sounds like this is not the case? Wouldn't it take the pressure off of the wild populations?

[DaveW]

Most collectors think the same Mike. However national CITES reps (usually unelected public sector employees from Botanical Gardens, without any representatives from the plant trade) decided the native country should be the ones to originally profit from sales of their own flora. However countries like Mexico don't seem to have the ability or infrastructure to do so, but adopt a dog in the manger attitude to any foreign firm capable of doing so by refusing to allow them to do it for them.

A sensible system would be to get experienced foreign firms, say in Holland, Japan or E. Europe and those in other countries skilled in mass propagation to do it for them under a licence system for say the first two years, where they paid a royalty to Mexico on every plant propagated. At the moment we have an even more crazy system where some countries allow plants to be collected by overseas institutions for scientific research with the proviso once no longer required they must all be destroyed and not passed on to the trade for propagation.

Also I gather with illegal CITES confiscated plants, if Botanical Gardens do not want them and their native country does not want them back they are destroyed rather than put into the trade for propagation. Maybe cactus societies and hobbyists around the world should be lobbying their elected representatives to get things changed and prohibit their own institutions agreeing to the destruction of scheduled material and insisting it should go into their national trade for propagation and distribution?

The only legal instance of ex situ propagation for collectors I know was The British Cactus & Succulent Society obtained permission to collect seeds of Yavia cryptocarpa, raised and grafted them and sold them to members. My original plant from this propagation below.

Yavia cryptocarpa.jpg (91.5 KiB) Viewed 8462 times

[NM]

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[DaveW]

Hi Charles see:-

http://www.emmitsburg.net/gardens/artic ... /latin.htm

https://cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37453

Even using Latin to decide pronunciation of botanical names is not straightforward, particularly in the UK since according to Stearn's "Botanical Latin" there are two forms of Latin used here, "Reformed Academic", which is pronounced more like Continental or Church Latin and "Traditional English", both of which pronounce some letters slightly different.

It's a case of as long as you are understood don't worry about it and we always tend to modify the pronunciation to match those we are talking to anyway.

[Minime8484]

I don't hold out much hope for MG in the future. I ordered months ago (April, just days after Michiel), didn't hear anything so contacted them in May. Got auto-email that they were out of town in May and back in June. Still no word. It's a bit asinine that even a new business would require multiple 'reminders' from customers...and mine wasn't exactly a small order. I guess I'll contact them again in a couple more weeks if I don't hear anything by then. Really frustrating.

[NM]

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[SCS]

Hi Guys-

Has anyone made a cactus plant order from Mesa? I think they put the new list up in April. Has anyone received anything and if so, how long did it take? I ask because they have a different email address for plants and I am hoping they might be able to speed that part of the business up.

I too placed a sizeable seed order in March, called in June. They stated they can only process 15 seed orders a day, and they are getting 50 orders a day. They sent my order, which I am not sure is fair. What about the folks ahead of me that didn't call?

Thanks to anyone who has some plant info to share.....
Best regards, Lisa
Lisa

[Minime8484]

Hey Lisa!!
My order of mostly plants (only 2 seed species) was placed on April 12...days after the plant list was updated.
They *just* contacted me yesterday (after 2 email queries in the past couple of months) that they will start working on my order next week.
We'll see.
Need to catch up again soon!
Tristan

[SCS]

Hi Tristan!

Yikes, that's depressing that plant orders aren't staffed any better.

I watched their video on the seed packets, so it initially made sense why seed orders take so long. (But they should have fixed that by now!)

Thanks for the info!

Best regards, Lisa

[mikej]

Lisa,

I too ordered in March (seeds only) and haven't heard back yet. I'm reluctant to call or message them, since they're clearly busier than they can handle, but it would be nice to know how much longer to expect...