A word of caution about the plants at the big box stores
So last spring I was looking for Rubus albescens "Mysore raspberry". Called around the nurseries with no luck but one day I was in Lowes and darned if they didn't have them. The only thing was that the picture on the tag was wrong, not even close. Mysore have small button shaped black when ripe fruit. The tag showed the fruit as elongated and red so about as wrong as it could get.
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The name on the tag was right and it looked like the plant I was after so I bought a few and brought them home and planted them. They grew like weeds and bloomed in just a few months. Once they had fruit I knew for certain they were "Mysore".
Here is a picture of what the fruit really looks like, the black fruit is ripe.
I decided I would write to Lowes and tell them of their mistake. The corporate office responded promptly and they were nice and informed me they had trained horticulturists on staff that review all tags for accuracy and sometimes information on the tags can contain opinion and opinions can differ and blah blah blah. I wrote back and told them I appreciated the response but this was not a matter of opinion.....I sent them a picture of the tag and a picture of the fruit from my plant as well as a picture of the fruit from an online source. They wrote back and admitted a mistake had been made and they were working on a new tag. A few weeks later they email me the new tag picture and I just had to laugh.....the new tag looked like they had simple used photoshop to shorten the fruit so it was not so long. It was the same fruit, same bright red and glossy just now shorter. They asked if thos picture better reflected the actual fruit?....Emailed them back and said shape and size of the picture is right but the fruit is not red when ripe, it is black. They said they would make a new tag and do see they have changed the picture on the website to reflect the right fruit.
On the plus side the plant is growing great, some of the canes are larger than a nickel and blooming well. It just shows that you have to do your homework when you deal with those stores. I was in Lowes yesterday and they had a display of northern highbush bareroot blueberry plants....even if they would survive here you would never get any fruit yet you could see that some had been purchased.
Comments (13)
thonotorose
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