Chen Yi Nursery

[PeterT]

......there are many nurseries in UK that buy from her.

How many? Who are they?

Gerry in any given instance I could be wrong should I put names to some, so I won't name any. However all it takes is to look at the exclusive lists of plants on offer from various nurseries, and their catalogues from previous years.
 Comparison with Chen yi's list helps, but one soon builds up a picture of exclusive Chinese items which have suddenly become widely available. Most of these items disappear after 3/4 years. Some then reemerge on to the market at a much greater price, offered by single nurseries who would appear to have managed to grow on stock.

[johnw]

I find, after some careful thought in the last day or two and especially in the middle of the night when sleep wouldn't come, that I have become less tolerant of other people's views and this is to my discredit. While I make my own choices regarding my own actions, it is not for me to make judgements about other people's.

Lesley

Nonsense, snap back to your "former" self.  Shake us up as you see fit otherwise we just sit in front of the screen quite content and getting old.

johnw

[Lesley Cox]

Perhaps you're right John. Introspection never did become me I guess. So stand by to be blasted any time soon.

[johnw]

Perhaps you're right John. Introspection never did become me I guess. So stand by to be blasted any time soon.

Datta girl.   You're a marvelous brain stimulant.

johnw

[Lesley Cox]

Actually, when I re-read that particular reply (15), I see it's so pretentious I want to hide under the floorboards.

[gote]

If one doesnt' have a life, destroying and contributing with money to it of a wild species won't give you one. A hobby can not be more important than the existence of a species that is the result of millions of years of evolution.

As things go, she will receive the Nobel prize any time. From her kin, no doubt.

I assume that you by destruction mean extiction, If so:
#1: Do you approve of extiction by destruction of the habitat? This is a many times greater threat to species tha collection can ever be.
#2: Would you please list those species that have become extinct through collecting by CY
Göte

[Tim Ingram]

When I was younger I used to buy plants such as trilliums which must have been wild dug, but somehow I didn't think of this, it was just the prospect of growing such interesting plants. Sadly they nearly all grew poorly because of damage to the roots and being out of the ground for so long. Now there are quite a few nurseries growing these plants from seed and success in establishing them is so much greater. Just from a purely practical viewpoint, the latter way of introducing plants seems so much more effective, if slower and less profitable, that most gardeners I would have thought would have tended in that direction. This is a sort of win win situation in the long run.

[art600]

The destruction in Turkey at the moment is horrifying.

They have borrowed money to build roads that far exceed the country's current or future needs.  Whole mountains have disappeared.

[arisaema]

Now there are quite a few nurseries growing these plants from seed and success in establishing them is so much greater.

If this was true you'd expect the Western species to be just as common as those from the East Coast, yet that is certainly not the case...

[arisaema]

As far as I understand,any nursery carrying Lilium lijiangense, Lilium rosthornii or Helleborus thibetanus, are benefiting from her introductions even if they do not actually resell imported plants and there are many more.
Göte

She's introduced a lot of new (and undescribed) species of Corydalis, the two best known examples are probably C. panda and C. capitata... Many of her introductions have also ended up in tissue culture; C. 'Silver Spectre', C. temulifolia 'Chocolate Stars', C. 'Blackberry Wine' and Thalictrum ichangense comes to mind.

[Tim Ingram]

Yes - having mentioned Corydalis temulifolia elsewhere, I would be hypocritical to take too purist a stance and there is huge pleasure in growing many of these plants. Maybe it is difficult to take up an overgeneralised position, but we do tend to do this. What must be of value is building closer connections between horticulturists in different countries, with the prospect of more sustained cultivation and dissemination of plants (like what has happened in Turkey with cyclamen, and also as mentioned earlier in China too). After all it is the magnificence of the Chinese flora which attracts so many people to the country, and so many people to want to grow the plants.

[Afloden]

  Asarum campaniforme is also one she introduced that was subsequently named. Most of her stuff was available in Japan long before is was available in the West. In fact, the obscenely high prices were originally from people importing the exorbitantly priced material from Japan.

  If you are buying material from China without a collection number tied to it it is more than likely associated with Chen Yi. It is also my understanding that she does not pre-collect everything on the list and then send out the list to see what people want. Some of it is listed and then collected. That does not make wild collection better, but is it really any different if one digs material from the wild with a permit or without one? Its the same thing, its just the legally dug material has the permit cost factored into the price.

 

[Lesley Cox]

I suppose there are some advantages to NZ consciences in that we are unable to import live plants (well we are but with long quarantine periods and costs reaching very many thousands of dollars for even a first few plants so that the practice would be totally unviable) and species such as Trillium or Arisaema or anything else for that matter, enter the country as seeds. Plants of what we already have are only swapped among friends or bought from small, local sources. So far as Trillium is concerned, the western species are common here among gardeners and especially alpine/woodland gardeners while the eastern species are rarely seen ever. The seed which has come of most, seems much more difficult to germinate and grow on, in my experience anyway.

[PeterT]

Now there are quite a few nurseries growing these plants from seed and success in establishing them is so much greater.

If this was true you'd expect the Western species to be just as common as those from the East Coast, yet that is certainly not the case...

perhaps the western species are just harder to market or to grow and  so will remain less common despite propagation in cultivataion?

[arisaema]

Now there are quite a few nurseries growing these plants from seed and success in establishing them is so much greater.

If this was true you'd expect the Western species to be just as common as those from the East Coast, yet that is certainly not the case...

perhaps the western species are just harder to market or to grow and  so will remain less common despite propagation in cultivataion?

I highly doubt that... The Western species I've grown have been very easy, and certainly admired by visitors when in flower. You can buy legally collected, decent quality plants from North Carolina and Tennessee for just $0.80/rhizome, it just doesn't make financial sense to spend 5+ years raising them from seeds.