GW bromeliad forum members are a very friendly group, it took me a bit of botching to get past the zone requirement but I do enjoy opening when I have a spare half hour  not very often. I am very wary of internet forums as they can be used to very quickly assassinate the character of other persons, we have seen it in the past. A good example is the ill informed accusations about Keith Golinski  then the apologies when he gave the facts. ÂSorry does not remove the mud! In reply: Friday 18 Dec: "It would be easy to name the perpetrator ,she is well known"  Yes it is me, Lynn Hudson, the Facilitator of the Council of Australian Bromeliad Societies, Secretary of Cairns Society and BSI Director  all voluntary. " i have let a close relative of her know of the matter"  Why has Jack not contacted me himself? "you bet i am P @$#^%& D of." - is a tragic waste of energy when this could have been sorted 18 months ago. You have stewed this in your mind until your accusations have become very dangerous. " there is the smallest possibility that the plant died ( ha ha ha )"  Jack it is alive and well. "i am not in the mood for any legal action that would follow if i did name her" - What???? What is this prattle??? " she is the secretary of that society ,would my complaint be acknowledged ? not a chance ,it would be a lost letter each time!" - This type of behaviour is not practiced by me. You do not know me Jack, I do not hide. I face up to my own actions and responsibilities. Sat Dec 12: " the plant of 'Montezuma's Gem ' i donated for the Cairns world conference ( it was donated at the Port Macquarie reginal conference ,and had a opening bid for some $250 to be carried on at Cairns )" At the time you said the plant was donated to Cairns Society for fundraising for the conference. "this plant was not produced for the rare plant auction by the person that took it up there ,and when questioned said she said had a headache and would worry about it some other time" - Jack did not at any time discuss this plant with me at the WBC or since. At the Auction Bob, my husband said there was an enquiry about the plant. I did not say I had a headache, I said "the grasshoppers made a feast of it", which was the truth, it was ragged. From Lisa "As for the woman who appropriated your intended auction plant, I'd be plenty steamed about that too. She's taking money out of the society's coffers!  Taking money out?? Previously not publicly mentioned is that I put in over $5000.00 of my own money into WBC18, not to mention time, petrol, phone calls etc. Plantsplus: "I would be asking the appropriator of the conference donation to return the plant to you" - I am happy to return the plant to Jack. I was hesitant in taking the tiny seedling in the first place as I have all sizes of grasshoppers feed on my bromeliads. " unless they want you to name names. Alternately send an open letter to the Brom Society in question (without a name) and voice your disappointment that a member would act so disgracefully."  This type of back door behaviour does not reap any good rewards. I prefer to work upfront and honestly. "Having said that we all know some people who will do anything to get a brom if they want it. I just wonder how many generous growers get "done over" by them just because they are too polite to "out them". These people are crooks plain and simple Â" - I am pretty well known as being too generous and honest. I seldom accept any plant without making payment. As Len Trevor says: "As soon as someone stands up to do something, there are persons who just want to criticize and knock them down. In fact these same persons are simply jealous as they are not as capable as the person who is busy doing the job." I was not paid to organize either the Port Macquarie or Cairns conferences. I also paid my own way just like every delegate. This also applies to attending BSI conferences and board meetings. Officers and Directors pay our own airfares, accommodation registration etc., but we do get free lunch at board meetings! We are volunteers. As Jack said "Ethics is now a endangered species". - Surely personally getting the facts up front before making accusations is ethical. I have just spoken to Jack. The plant will be up for Auction at the Darwin conference in April 2011.

I have ordered from him many times, though not in a long time. Plants are always in excellent condition and relatively large. He also hasa pretty good repetoire of jungle cactus and Epiphyllums which are hard to find some other places. But that is all there is good I can say... (which is enough for most people). On the down side, a LOT (and from my experience, MOST) of the plants are misidentified (or have completely fabricated names). The species spellings are so bad on his old web site (which I see has finally had an upgrade) that even if they species might have been correctly identified, they were so badly mispelled, I sure couldn't tell. VERY unprofessional.. NOT the place anyone who cares what they are actually getting would want to order from. And expect delays! First time ordered I got my plants promptly (relatively)- in 6 weeks. Last time I ordered in summer (July) and got my plants in early November!!! That was after the previous year of ordering in September and getting them at the end of November when it was too cold for some of them arleady. But the more I complained, the longer it took to get my plants, so best to probably prepare for the ridiculous wait and be patient. Compare this to ARidlands.com which has close to the perfect web site: photos of the plants you are getting, and a shipping turn around of about 4 days. And these people know their plants! So I order almost exclusively from them now.

Some (?all) of the typos that Bboy points out look like Optical Character Recognition mistakes during scanning from a paper copy - 'a' to 'n' (in 'Blaauw' to 'Blanuw') is certainly a typical OCR error. Juniperus x media van Melle was at the time (1983) thought to be correct; it was only in 1994 that it was pointed out that it was a later homonym for J. x media Dmitr., published in 1938 in an obscure Soviet journal unavailable in the west. The 'discovery' was made by P. A. Schmidt, who re-named van Melle's plant as Juniperus x pfitzeriana (note, pf-, not ph- !!). Resin

Nice job, Pam! Let's see if I can attempt to answer some of your questions, Jakki... The three producers named are the sources of the vast majority of tc hostas in the US - which means the vast majority of premium hostas. They are all strictly wholesale companies. Shady Oaks sells only young tc plants. The other two also sell tc babies, but also sell plants that they have grown on for a while. When a retailer buys the plants from these wholesalers, they usually also purchase the tags for the plants. Some folks prefer to print up their own, but that doesn't necessarily mean they didn't just buy the plants without tags. So a nursery may very well sell plants that they purchased recently from any or all of these wholesalers, plus they may be selling plants they purchased from these wholesalers and grew on for a year or two, and they may also be selling divisions that they have made from mother plants from whatever source. If they have the wholesalers tag, they probably came from there... if not, you just can't be sure without knowing the nurseryman. All three of these companies are very sensitive to disease and infestations. I've never seen nematodes carried in the products of any of the three. Since both SO and Q&Z deal primarily in young plants grown in greenhouse conditions, they are unlikely to pick up neems. Walters sells some field grown divisions, but they are also quite vigilant. Virus is something else. All three are testing their stock before they tc it so they are getting clean babies. Walters did circulate some HVX stuff because they imported from Holland before we really understood much about HVX. Of course, the problem is, you can trust that they got good stock from any of the three - but you have to trust how it was handled after they received it. I've purchased from all three for about ten years straight and never, to my knowlege, received a diseased plant. Wish I could say the same for some of the smaller growers who I tried to support... Take clean stock and put it into a field with nematodes for a year, or fail to clean your equipment properly after inadvertantly picking up a virused plant, and you've got diseased hostas to sell. I'm not clear how the big box stores get their stock. I was under the impression that much of their stuff was coming directly from Europe - and concerns and standards about HVX are much lower in Holland than in our hosta community here. They consider it OK to ship a whole batch if only a small percentage shows symptomes - ignoring the fact that they are also powerwashing all of them together and reusing water, thus spreading the virus to many other plants. Apparently it is OK with them to sell it if it looks OK now, even if a year or two from now it will have spread HVX to gardens all over the world. No one company provides all the variety a typical hoophouse or big box nursery needs, so they buy from a number of different wholesalers... and it is usually impossible to be sure who the plant comes from unless it bears a particular wholesaler's tag. And about Ken's comment. A little known or understood fact: Every patented or PPAF (Plant Patent Applied For) "must" be sold with an extra tag that gives the patent information. It is illegal to propagate/divide patented hostas. I've heard different versions, but the common understanding of that is you are OK if you divide it for your own garden, but if you sell or trade or even give a division of the plant away before the patent expires, you are breaking the law. If you buy a patented hosta without that tag, either it is an illegaly propagated plant or the seller has just neglected to meet the letter of the law and still has the patent tag in a drawer someplace. When I buy a patented plant wholesale, I receive a quantity of those special tags equal to the number I have paid for. If I were to grow that plant on and divide it, I wouldn't have enough of the special tags to go around and this would, theoretically, prevent me from selling an illegal plant. Royalties are a different matter altogether. Whether or not a plant is patented, an originator may make a contract with someone to produce, grow, and sell the hosta. That contract may include an agreement that the originator will receive a royalty on each sale for a set amount of time. There's been a dramatic increase in the number of plants I pay a royalty on. On a recent wholesale order just over half the plants had a royalty attached - but then, I tend to be buying newer items for my self and resale. On the six hostason that order, I paid .50 on each Brother Stephan, .25 on Remember Me (which goes to the Susan B. Komen foundation). Other royalties ranged from .13 on each Eupatorium 'Little Joe' to .45 for the new Brunnera 'King's Ransom.' As a percentage, the royalty usually adds around 7-15% to the wholesale cost of the plants. How's that for some stuff to chew on?! Gardening can be about hard work and creating and appreciating beauty - but if you combine it with business, it gets mighty complicated mighty fast!