Re: Mini/small blues
Chick wrote:
> Anyone who has much experience with Dutch hostas would have no trouble believing
> your tale. Sorry if anyone considers this slanderous, but hostas coming from
> Holland are notorious for being mislabled. When I complained to our salesperson
> from an importer we were dealing with, he laughed and said, and he was Dutch and I
> swear this is true, he said that Dutch growers think American garden centers don't
> know the difference, so if they have too much of something, they just relabel it
> as something else. I haven't bought a Dutch hosta since. I told him they were
> cutting their own throat because sooner or later buyers were going to get tired of
> it. That was about 10 years ago and they are still doing it and still selling
> millions of hostas here. Low price wins out over quality again.
The fact is that most hostas are not bought by the kind of people who subscribe to
this list, but by gardeners looking to fill a spot in their beds who have seen hostas
in someone's garden or flipped through a book and liked the look of them. If they buy
a blue hosta and it is in fact a blue, they are happy. Same with varigateds, yellows,
etc.Chances are if it was labeled with a name they lost the tag and/or forgot the name
within a couple of weeks of planting. Why would they be willing to pay $15 to $50 for
a named cultivar that they probably couldn't tell from the $2.98 unnamed or mislabeled
plant? That's the market the Dutch are after, and they get it.
Bob Campbell
.
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