Anthurium seeds, We do not sell Anthurium, Why Anthurium seeds are difficult to buy, Anthurium plants, Exotic Rainforest rare tropical plants

A select number of wild collected South American Anthurium seeds (including Anthurium jenmanii) can be purchased from my friend Joep Moonen in French Guiana. You can contact Joep (yupe) at this address: EmeraldJungleVillage@wanadoo.fr

Below are alternate links that may help you find an answer to your query. We strive to keep all our articles "user friendly" but still based in science. We also do our best to make these pages understandable and many students use them for class room answers. Please let us know if we can help you find information more easily. Our email address is Steve@ExoticRainforest.com

The information below was posted in mid 2007 due to a dramatic price increase in Anthurium plants in SE Asia. The prices in Asia have now dramatically been reduced especially on sites such as eBay. This newspaper article explains more: http://old.thejakartapost.com/detailcity.asp?fileid=20090124.T04&irec=3

Aroids in the genus Anthurium are strictly a Neotropical plant group found naturally only in Mexico, Central America, South America and the West Indies. There are currently approximately 1000 species known to science and many are not common plant species. Growers do grow Anthurium, especially hybrid variations, all over the world, but the true species are not easily found, nor are they common outside their native range. Anthurium have recently become a large cash crop in the country of India and have been grown for many years in Hawaii. From questions asked on the internet some people appear to believe Anthurium species commonly grow naturally in Hawaii, on Pacific islands, and Asia. They do not. Only imported species can be found in those islands and on any continent other than South America as well as Central America. After you read this page, and please finish since you may learn something important about how to buy Anthurium species, read this page: http://www.alsgh.com/blog/ If you haven't figured it out already, Anthurium seeds are not easy to find! This article attempts to explain why.

The ExoticRainforest is a private botanical garden and is not a retail nursery. We do not sell Anthurium seed or specimens. We offer information regarding tropical species but we don't offer plants for sale. At least a portion of the information you are looking to find, including how to find Anthurium for sale is found within this text.

Many people want to a handful of seeds for just a dollar or two. Some offer substantially more, but one naturalist in South America told me that no price was worth the effort to go out and collect the seeds! I've received requests for up to 10,000 seeds at one time! That number would be virtually impossible to find in North America. The life expectancy (viability) of Anthurium seed is short. If they die in transit the buyer is going to want their money back! That alone makes the effort not worthwhile. If not packed perfectly, they will likely produce nothing in only a few weeks. I'm not sure if the people who make these kinds of requests truly understand how short the seed viability actually is as well as how long and difficult it is to grow, clean and collect a small bag of seeds.

Even though I grow many rare Anthurium species, and do sometimes grow seeds, those seeds are not readily available. And if they were, the seeds of the rarer species are valuable! Some, very valuable. Most growers who manage to produce and harvest seed just don't wish to sell them. And there is a very good reason.

If a grower floods the market with too many Anthurium plants he/she can easily destroy their own market. This has been proven over and over again with species such as Anthurium veitchii and more recently with Anthurium jenmanii, or at least a plant everyone thought was Anthurium jenmanii. Just a few years ago a small specimen of Anthurium veitchii could demand a price of $100.00. Today, most growers can't sell that species for prices as low as $5.00 or $6.00! And there are other species that have suffered the same fate. Although beautiful, Anthurium veitchii makes a less-than-perfect house plant. An Anthurium grower in the United States who controls their market can easily demand $20 to $100 for a

nice small Anthurium specimen depending on the rarity of the species. If one is lucky enough to produce seeds the grower would rarely be willing to sell them when they can grow a few of the plants themselves and then sell those plants in a few years at a substantially higher price. When I purchased my first Anthurium regale I paid $130 for a small specimen. Today you can sometimes find one for $30. The more plants that are offered, the lower the prices fall. Were anyone to obtain 10,000 seeds of a rare species the price of that specimen would drop to a very low price. It is called "price and demand". Just ask the growers in Indonesia who now find the prices in their country have dropped so low few growers can make a good profit. Too many plants offered for sale results in much lower prices.

The current motivation in SE Asia appears to be the magnificent size of some Anthurium specimens. Anthurium schlechtendalii (photo above right) can grow to be immense. These are known as "birds nest" forms and are members of Anthurium Section Pachyneurium. But those specimens take a lot of space to grow! In Florida, an acre of good land can cost $1,000,000 or more not counting building structures so a grower with only four or five acres can invest a large amount of money. Those who grow these plants have made substantial investments in their businesses and do not wish to destroy that investment by having the price of the product drop to near zero. There are growers in Florida that often do grow Anthurium for either retail or wholesale purposes, but even they often control the number of specimens they will grow.

I suspect the real reason so many growers, especially in SE Asia, want to large quantities of seed is they think they can get rich quick! During the summer of 2007 they saw common plants sell on eBay for upwards of $500 to as high as $900 each and everyone wanted to cash in. But they do so without realizing they are affecting the law of "price and demand". And on eBay, the demand has dropped so low that the prices are now also low! They hope to sell the plants at a substantial profit and hope growers in the United States will sell the seeds for a low price. But if 10,000 specimens of a previously rare plant suddenly hit the market the price would plummet from perhaps $100 per plant to a few dollars per plant! And that quickly destroys the market.

Anthurium regale is endemic to Peru, not Ecuador or Colombia. It is one of the most beautiful of all anthurium species.

After I declined a recent offer one Indonesian grower then sent back an email saying he could demand up to $100,000 for a single plant. Perhaps, but you can't sell 1000 plants for that price! Why? People will only pay a high price if the plant is very difficult to obtain! If you have 10,000 of those plants to sell, how much can you ask for a specimen? He was also hoping someone would sell him the often difficult to obtain seeds for just a few cents each. There are growers in some areas of the United States that do harvest seeds, but I promise it is highly unlikely they will even answer an email from anyone wishing to buy those seeds. They prefer to grow just enough of them to keep the market healthy and then sell the plants.

Despite what many appear to believe, growers in the United States do not have yards filled with adult Anthurium specimens! The seeds are often quite rare. Most people do not realize the life cycle of an Anthurium species is complicated. Anthurium species possess one of nature's most interesting forms of plant reproduction. First the plant has to produce an inflorescence. That inflorescence is composed of many parts, but the principal ones are the spathe and spadix and may take months to develop. The spathe looks like a "flower" but is not! The spathe is simply a specially adapted leaf. At the center of the spathe is an elongated portion known as the spadix. The true flowers, both male and female, form on the spadix, but are extremely small. That too can take months.

Species require a natural insect pollinator to pollinate the spadix and that insect is almost always a beetle from the genus Cyclocephala. And that insect is "assigned" to pollinate a specific species and does not live in North America. When ready to reproduce, the plant emits a "perfume" known as a pheromone that one particular species of male beetle which lives where the Anthurium grows naturally can detect. The spadix can be pollinated by humans using a very light camel hair brush, but it is difficult to time perfectly and requires expertise. In most cases you can't just remove the pollen from the spadix and apply it to the female flowers of the same spadix since the male flowers which produce pollen form after the receptive female flowers are spent. You must collect and freeze the pollen when it is produced and save it in a special freezer container until the next time the plant produces a spathe and spadix. Only then can you apply it, and even that is difficult. The total time can easily be well over one year. Why? Read this page: More information on Anthurium species? Click this link.

The male, female and sterile flowers of Anthurium species are produced along the spadix at the center of the inflorescence and are very tiny. You need a very good magnifying tool to even see them. Some species allow the male and female flowers to grow together up and down the length of the spadix but many of the rarer species do not. The female and male flowers are intentionally divided by a sterile zone to prevent self pollination. Nature is very clever! The female

flowers become "receptive" first and that can be detected only when the spadix begins to produce pheromones (scent, or perfume) and a light liquid. Frequently you can smell the perfume several feet away but you must be observant! If you miss it your opportunity has passed for perhaps another year.

If a beetle that is appropriate for that species is present, and picks up pollen from a separate plant already at male anthesis the female flowers may then be pollinated. BUT, the male flowers often do not begin to produce pollen until well after the female flowers are spent. So unless you have already collected pollen and stored it in a freezer under special conditions there is none available for you to use to pollinate the plant. Only a few collectors will have two or more plants of the same species so it is highly unlikely, even if you do have multiple specimens, to have both come into fertility at precisely the right time when one is producing male flowers and the other is producing female flowers. It almost never happens in a collection. If you want to know more about aroid pollination read this page: Natural pollination in aroid species

The pollen is also extremely fine and difficult to collect correctly. It must be totally free of moisture and stored in a frozen sealed tube until you are ready to use it. Few serious collectors will take the time to collect it and wait 7 months or more for another spadix to develop, then apply. And if they do, it is highly unlikely they will sell those seeds for a fraction of their worth.
On day 3, approximately 4 cm of Anthurium regale's spadix is now exposed.

On day 3, approximately 4 cm of Anthurium regale's spadix is now exposed.

Once pollinated, the spadix will produce berries in approximately the next three months and those berries contain the seeds, normally two seeds per berry. As a result, seeds are rare in a collector's growing situation! Especially in the rarer species that most of the folks in Indonesia and southeast Asia are trying to ! There are a few species that will self pollinate, but only a few. In the genus Anthurium there are some species which produce ripe fruit with viable seed without pollination. This phenomenon is known to a botanist as the species being apomictic.

Anthurium species are known to be highly variable and not every leaf of every specimen will always appear the same. This link explains in greater detail the scientific principle of natural variation and morphogenesis. Click here.

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