Mike, First I want to say, the plants I received, beginning Jan 1, 2010, were in 3-4" containers, bulbs and cuttings. Only a handful were larger, meaning 8" to 1' tall. Total: 58. :) :( Marguest, your Banana Tree is beautiful. The colors amazing. There's even a pup. Did you find it on Ebay? Mike, to answer a few questions. I MUST stay away from Ebay..It's one addicting site. Not only do they have great deals on plants, but plant supplies. There's also a few online nurseries I browse every other wk or so. The internet makes it too easy to shop for such an exciting hobby. A few clicked keys, next thing, a package is at your front door? One word of Warning for those who really want to stop buying plants.. Well, an attempt. Do NOT sign up for nursery News Letters. It's convenient, swaying us to their site, displaying their wares. Hear the clicking keys to Paypal? lol. As for local nurseries, fortunately, there are two that sell very very nice and rare specimens..luckily, opposite directions, both a long distance drive. An hour on non-congested days, 1.5-2 hours during 9-5, Rush Hour traffic. Although, traffic has gotten so heavy the past five years, the only time to go anywhere with time to spare is between midnight and 5am. Problem is, the stores are closed. lol. Our grocery store, Jewel's, always has plants for sale. Mostly, basic plants like Spaths, certain Dracaenas, etc. My problem arises when they have dollar sales. 3-4" potted plants for 1.00. Every so often, they'll have a rarer specimen. Buy 3, pot them up, and you have a lovely plant for 3.00. Four years ago, they had, mixed in with other dollar plants, Schefflera 'brassaia/actinophylla, a plant I hadn't seen in years...last one) I grabbed it up fast. lol. That's about it. Not too bad for 9 months. lol. Toni

It seems to me that now and then I do see very rude posts here, and they don't all come from the same poster. I understand how people sometimes can feel left out and that there are cliques on forums, but often it's a subjective impression; when people post for a long time on forums and know one another by first names and have an idea of everybody else's preferences, it's easy to perceive that as an exclusive group. I don't belong to any group anywhere and don't want to - I enjoy all the posts and appreciate when there is good humour and tolerance of others, coming from a society where that was often quite lacking at times with more serious outcomes than a bit of a huff on a forum. How about we all wipe the slate clean, forget the past and enjoy all our wonderful plants in the present. And I don't apologise if that sounds like a lecture, I love y'all.

Karen are the channels the full lengh of the leaf? and very narrow, Cylindrica doesn't have channels, and the amount of leaves to a growth is important, they look like they have been grown in shade, and perhaps too much water or the soil may not be right. The long leaf suggests a cylincrica v patula, I just can't tell from the picture. Karen I live in a semi-dry desert. I grow mine very hard, that is probably why I can't read the pictures , no name is better then the wrong name. I am judging one to be suffruticosa because of the short channels just to let the leaves out. Most of my suffruticoa have the very light leaves when they first emerge, later turning darker. As soon as you see a new growth starting out of a node between leaves you guess it is one of the suffruticossa clan. And there is one giant of the clan. are several of these, (about 10) S. gracilis, S. caulensence (spelling) San. ballyi 12681) the miniature of the clan, now called S. minnie. I left the old name on. S. Frosty spears, some have lines on the backs, and when they are dry for the winter, these are darker then the background. I have several others, and they are extremely difficult to tell apart unless you line them up by length of leaf, or girth of leaf. Now you know why any of us who has any sense at all will recline to pin it down, and would be fools to do so, this is reason why the names are all mixed up now, because the the so called experts want to be experts tend to pin a name on any different leaf they find. 'I have a different 'Moonshine leaf' I have been keeping still about this because it is not stable yet to warrent a sport name, 'Polka Dot' LOL it just may stick. hybrids may be named anything you want. This is also causing big problems, This is what they are doing renameing these plants, people buy names, not plants, sellers make more money this way, so I don't want to even venture into this practice. I think it is dirty pool and not fair and then charge more money because people like us think we have found sometning new. Would you want this to happen to you? This is what happed to you beacuse some of your members passed out a plant they they couldn't bother to get the name like you are trying to do. Just love them and enjoy them the plant doesn't care if it is not named and I'll just send you one that is, but I do need your address. Do you like stiff leaves or soft ones. What ever species I have exta of. Norma

0nametaken0 Prices varied. Generally, they had $1-$3 ones in the small 2 inch pots, $3-4 for 3 inch pots, $4-6 for the 4 inch pots. It all depended on the vendor, type, and condition of C&S of course. It was nice because most of the pots already had relatively gritty soil and had nice top dressing. Some of the ones I bought had what I believe to be 1:1:1 soil:perlite:granite so you knew it wasn't growing in some junky peat moss lol. There were so many vendors and so many sizes of each C&S, there was a lot to choose from based on your price ranges. Of course there were more expensive C&S available but I wasn't looking to spend too much there. There were some pseudolithos that I really thought about getting but passed on and they were $11-$12 for one, although that was just at one vendor. Also a few Cephalocereus senilis that was about 2 feet tall that was being sold for $20, passed on that one too.