Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
General Subjects => Plants Wanted Or For Exchange => Topic started by: maggiepie on January 28, 2012, 03:47:49 PM
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Not sure where to post this.
Am wondering if anyone has dealt with this nursery, there's not much information on the website.
http://chenyinursery.com/
They have geraniums I have been trying to find for a very long time.
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Helen,
If you have a search around any gardening forum you will likely find threads about ChenYi.
Also much talk of what has been sourced from there, and how little of it is correctly named.
There is also a reputation for a lot of plants having been taken from the wild and also exported illegally. :(
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Maggi is right...it's almost ironic to see this come through as "new topic". I suspect you'll find copious discussions, both pro and con about this nursery and its plants. It is widely known amongst the folks that import plants from abroad.
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Thanks, Maggi and Carlo,
Was starting to think that the name was familiar.
I wasn't looking for plants was after seeds.
The pics of some geraniums weren't correct but whatever they were I would love to have them.
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They seem to be the primary exporters of ornamental plants from China.. the moral debates keep going and so does Chen Yi.
With the habitat destruction going on in some areas they might even be reponsable for a part in the ex situ preservation of otherwise extinct species.
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This week my order arrived with most Begonia,s and some bulbs.
From all 8 Begonia,s there,s none correct,and all send to me are worthless.
The bulbs ? ............i have to wait offcourse .
I don,t know if they were grown at the nursery or taken from the wild...........that would be very wrong :'(
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In the meantime, people keep on supporting this gross indecency with their orders.
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At the time Chen Yi first started exporting, we weren't allowed to import
them into Canada, though that had nothing to do with Chen Yi - Canadian
inspectors found nematodes in Chinese plants that had come in with
phytos, so distrusted the Chinese inspection system and wouldn't issue
permits for us to import.
A lot of her plants were imported into the U.S. and U.K. and offered for
sale by a number of nurseries.
There was a lot of discussion in specialist groups to get their proper
identities sorted out.
Seeds from them are offered in exchanges, so I am growing a number of
plants ex Chen Yi - Arisaema, Cardiocrinum, Lilium and Tricyrtis.
I never looked for Geranium seed, but you might find some.
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We can't of course, but it seems to me that most one hears about Chen Yi is synonymous with the words "horror story."
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You can, for a modest extra fee, obtain fake Phytos from China.
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Seed seems the obvious and sustainable way of obtaining new plants from different parts of the world, and when so well organised and carried out as the AGS ACE expedition allows material to go to keen growers who are most likely to succeed with it, grow plants on and introduce them more generally to cultivation. When I asked Harry Jans about the prospect of further such collections in China, however, he was deeply pessimistic of the prospect, presumably because of the great difficulties dealing with red tape and, I would have to think you could fairly say, Nationalistic obstructionism. This is a shame because it tends to promote indiscriminate collection of plants from the wild - stimulated as Ezeiza says by our slightly ambivalent attitudes about how we obtain plants! Even some of the most respected plantsmen have been known to 'stretch the rules' (!) so it is difficult to be too righteous about this.
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As had been said, A large number of species new to cultivation in the west have been introduced by Chen Yi.
One of these is Lilium rosthornii which was considered virtually unknown but turned out to be grown as food crop in some areas (so it has hardly een necessary to collect in the wild). The Cardiocrium giganteum grown in Europe have usually come from the southwesterly part of their range of distribution. These will not survive the Swedish winters and must be protected even in North Germany. I grow since many years (ten?) two clones supplied by CY. (probably from Kansu) These have survived my winters with no protection and flower every third year.
It is very well to sit on the other side of the globe and tell the Chinese what they should do and not do. CY is not a drug smuggler working under the radar. She has been openly exporting plants for a very long time and must be well known to Chinese responsible authorities. Chinese authorities do control what is collected and exported from China as a number of European tourists learnt when the were being arrested for unauthorized collection of seeds.
I agree with Peter: She might well be responsible for ex situ preservation of threatened species. Large areas of Chinese nature are being razed to give space to food crops, water power dams and urbanisation. I think that it is a good thing if plants which can be sold are salvaged. We have horror stories from a country in the west where large populations of desirable plants have been destroyed in spite of volunteers begging to be allowed to salvage them.
To collect and sell plants growing by themselves in the forest is not a bad thing in itself. I do it with a good conscience and approval from Swedish authorities. (Picea abies, Pinus silvestris and the odd hardwood.) It is called logging.
To the original question:
CY is selling many plants from the wild. Thus many are misnamed. This does not necessarily mean that cheap plants are labeled with expensive names. The opposite may also happen. It is partly a kind of lottery.
Because of imprt regulations, they must be sold bare-rooted. That is hard on many plants like Primulas and there is a risk of them dying in transit or thereafter. Bulbs corms etc are more easily transported and will usually do well.
As far as I know, she has been a honest trader as far as money is concerned.
Of course there are horror stories Lesley. Happy customers do not write complaints and those who do not understand basic limitations might easily be disappointed.
Göte
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Of course there are horror stories Lesley. Happy customers do not write complaints and those who do not understand basic limitations might easily be disappointed.
Indeed, having had the pleasure of visiting her at the end of my China-trips three years in a row I can tell you her customer lists read like a who's who of the gardening world. That they don't want to out themselves publicly defending her is however perfectly understandable when reading the replies in this thread... A fair few of her plants ARE from cultivated stock, and the authorities are perfectly aware of what she's doing - there's at least one provincional government that promotes the collection of wild plants for medicinal and horticultural purposes.
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You can, for a modest extra fee, obtain fake Phytos from China.
I would point out that this, while most likely true (after all for a fee it is possible to obtain almost anything! :P ) is Alberto emphasising the level of illegality that some will sink to.
It is not something with which the SRGC would agree or associate with.
To paraphrase the words on Chen Yi in the recent "Bleeding Hearts" book - the situation exists; it is up to the individual conscience whether or not to get involved.
The SRGC position is that laws are not to be broken but it is not possible for the SRGC to "legislate" for such adherence. It is only possible to state what is the position taken by the Club.
It is true that given the incredibly wide range of people and firms, including some of the most famous names in the plant world, who have had dealings with Chen Yi, that it can appear that there is a level of ambivalence in such matters that is disturbing.
Personally, I think this is not an issue that can ever be easily resolved. :(
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...... it can appear that there is a level of ambivalence in such matters that is disturbing.
You can say that again Maggi! And in other, related contexts too.
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I find, after some careful thought in the last day or two and especially in the middle of the night when sleep wouldn't come, that I have become less tolerant of other people's views and this is to my discredit. While I make my own choices regarding my own actions, it is not for me to make judgements about other people's.
My original attitudes were formed, I suppose by my father whose take on life was that to be a "right" person, one had to be white, British and male. It was his absolute belief in this that sent me to opposite extremes and, I would have hoped to a wide tolerance - not only tolerance but full acceptance - of every human trait that was different from my own. It seems I still need to work on it.
So far as the horror stories are concerned Gote, I referred not to Chen Yi's collection practices, after all I have had no dealings of any kind with her, but only to the stories related here, of incorrect naming. And yes, of course, as in every situation, one hears only the complaints, not the praise.
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I have been in contact with several people who have seen her operation first hand, and I have experienced habitat destruction from whence some of her plants come. Numerous things are cultivated for medicinal use; some regional and some widespread. China started in the 1980's cultivation of some plants and in the 1990's other rarer plants have been brought into cultivation by native peoples to limit further harvest from the wild. Other things will be from the wild and such is the case with many places other than China. I have heard Chen Yi's father is an official the China department of agriculture. And we, outside China, don't know what regulations or laws there are that she must comply with. A recent trip to Vietnam shows the absurdity of government regulation protecting the habitat (this being an example outside similar experiences here in the US, but at least some groups get certification to rescue plants her). We, as collectors, paid a high fee to collect seed and herbarium samples while the majority of non-vertical habitat was being turned into cardamom plantations. What was not farmed was grazed, and all this in the national park. Even in "rural" areas the recent planting of cardamom was dooming the native flora into obscurity. Nothing grows beneath these cardamom plants 2m tall. It is soggy dark shade in the established plantations where the over story has been thinned and the understory essentially erased.
Galanthus are still collected from the wild in Turkey for sale. Plants (Trillium) in the US can be dug in the state I live in for a nominal fee of $100, collected from state land as long as they are not endangered, and resold. From private land with the landowners agreement I can do it for free and resell them. The neighboring states have similar laws. Most Trillium not seed grown (which is most if you do not see all stages from seedling to mature) come directly from the wild with a high markup. I have to pay for a phyto from some states to ship to my own state and that phyto "certifies" a shipment pest free, but 9 times out of 10 I can open the box and find pests immediately.
Buying anything brought into cultivation via Chen Yi, be it seedlings, seed, or the plants themselves, just furthers the collection, so if you are bothered by her primary actions then don't support the resellers of the plants or plants produced from those plants.
As Gote said, she has introduced many things into cultivation that were formerly not in cultivation or limited to the hallowed halls of botanical institutions who usually make little effort to get them into the general public. She has also introduced plants that were undescribed taxa!!! I know for a fact that the Polygonatum from her have and will change the floristic treatment of China for that genus with at least two undescribed taxa and numerous formerly in synonymy. The yellow Nomocharis was reintroduced by her and subsequently named.
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or limited to the hallowed halls of botanical institutions who usually make little effort to get them into the general public.
Some in fact, make efforts to AVOID their being introduced or distributed. A few days ago I asked for seed of an Arisaema, from one of the collection curators at Dunedin Botanic Gardens. She said "Sure" then added "I'll have to check that we're allowed to. Some botanic gardens won't permit their recipients of material to sell or give away anything from that source." Surely such sources should recognise that it's better to distribute material already being cultivated that encourage further new collections from the wild.
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Yes, many botanic gardens have done that in order to comply with
the Rio Convention on Biodiversity. The regulations usually say one must not
sell, select or breed the species one has requested seed of. It is considered
that the country of origin should be the only one to benefit from their
native plants.
I first noticed this when I wrote to one well-known botanic garden to buy
seeds they were offering for sale, so I wrote back to say I wouldn't be
buying any as I sometimes sell plants at garden club meetings. One of the
botanists responded that I needn't worry about that, but I still didn't buy
their seeds.
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Thanks Diane, I didn't realize there was such a reason. It seems a long way from a Chinese (in this case) botanic garden to a grower in New Zealand. I mean if I were to grow the seeds and sell some of the plants, I doubt if China would be the worse off.
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I have to pay for a phyto from some states to ship to my own that "certifies" a shipment pest free, but 9 times out of 10 I can open the box and find pests immediately.
so if you are bothered by her primary actions then don't support the resellers of the plants or plants produced from those plants.
Thank you Aaron for supporting my views.
In the days of Intra-European phytosanitary inspections etc - before Sweden entered the EU I bougt Narcissi from Holland. These came through 100% legal inspected channels and some were full of eelworms i.e. nemathodes Ditylenchus dipsacii. I could see them in my microscope.
Those who refuse to buy anything that origins from CY will have to boycott nearly every specialist nursery there is and stick to marigolds from the supermarket.
Göte
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Those who refuse to buy anything that origins from CY will have to boycott nearly every specialist nursery there is and stick to marigolds from the supermarket.
Göte
Given her current plant list, that might be a slight exaggeration.
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I find, after some careful thought in the last day or two and especially in the middle of the night when sleep wouldn't come, that I have become less tolerant of other people's views and this is to my discredit. While I make my own choices regarding my own actions, it is not for me to make judgements about other people's.
My original attitudes were formed, I suppose by my father whose take on life was that to be a "right" person, one had to be white, British and male. It was his absolute belief in this that sent me to opposite extremes and, I would have hoped to a wide tolerance - not only tolerance but full acceptance - of every human trait that was different from my own. It seems I still need to work on it.
So far as the horror stories are concerned Gote, I referred not to Chen Yi's collection practices, after all I have had no dealings of any kind with her, but only to the stories related here, of incorrect naming. And yes, of course, as in every situation, one hears only the complaints, not the praise.
Lesley, you are an utter delight.
I wish you lived somewhere near me.
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have had plants from her via will mclewin.yes many wrongly named but some pleasant surprises aswell..there are many nurseries in uk that buy from her.
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......there are many nurseries in uk that buy from her.
How many? Who are they?
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Those who refuse to buy anything that origins from CY will have to boycott nearly every specialist nursery there is and stick to marigolds from the supermarket.
Göte
Given her current plant list, that might be a slight exaggeration.
Sorry, I expressed myself badly I meant nurseries that do not carry anything originating from CY.
Göte
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......there are many nurseries in uk that buy from her.
How many? Who are they?
As far as I understand,any nursery carrying Lilium lijiangense, Lilium rosthornii or Helleborus thibetanus, are benefiting from her introductions even if they do not actually resell imported plants and there are many more.
Göte
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If one doesnt' have a life, destroying and contributing with money to it of a wild species won't give you one. A hobby can not be more important than the existence of a species that is the result of millions of years of evolution.
As things go, she will receive the Nobel prize any time. From her kin, no doubt.
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Lesley, you are an utter delight.
I wish you lived somewhere near me.
That's only because I have some nce Clematis Helen. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Lesley, you are an utter delight.
I wish you lived somewhere near me.
That's only because I have some nce Clematis Helen. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Haha, so do I.
I guess if I came visiting I would have to bring a big wheelbarrow with me !!
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......there are many nurseries in UK that buy from her.
How many? Who are they?
Gerry in any given instance I could be wrong should I put names to some, so I won't name any. However all it takes is to look at the exclusive lists of plants on offer from various nurseries, and their catalogues from previous years.
Comparison with Chen yi's list helps, but one soon builds up a picture of exclusive Chinese items which have suddenly become widely available. Most of these items disappear after 3/4 years. Some then reemerge on to the market at a much greater price, offered by single nurseries who would appear to have managed to grow on stock.
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I find, after some careful thought in the last day or two and especially in the middle of the night when sleep wouldn't come, that I have become less tolerant of other people's views and this is to my discredit. While I make my own choices regarding my own actions, it is not for me to make judgements about other people's.
Lesley
Nonsense, snap back to your "former" self. Shake us up as you see fit otherwise we just sit in front of the screen quite content and getting old.
johnw
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Perhaps you're right John. Introspection never did become me I guess. So stand by to be blasted any time soon. ;D
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Perhaps you're right John. Introspection never did become me I guess. So stand by to be blasted any time soon. ;D
Datta girl. ;) You're a marvelous brain stimulant.
johnw
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Actually, when I re-read that particular reply (15), I see it's so pretentious I want to hide under the floorboards. :-[
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If one doesnt' have a life, destroying and contributing with money to it of a wild species won't give you one. A hobby can not be more important than the existence of a species that is the result of millions of years of evolution.
As things go, she will receive the Nobel prize any time. From her kin, no doubt.
I assume that you by destruction mean extiction, If so:
#1: Do you approve of extiction by destruction of the habitat? This is a many times greater threat to species tha collection can ever be.
#2: Would you please list those species that have become extinct through collecting by CY
Göte
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When I was younger I used to buy plants such as trilliums which must have been wild dug, but somehow I didn't think of this, it was just the prospect of growing such interesting plants. Sadly they nearly all grew poorly because of damage to the roots and being out of the ground for so long. Now there are quite a few nurseries growing these plants from seed and success in establishing them is so much greater. Just from a purely practical viewpoint, the latter way of introducing plants seems so much more effective, if slower and less profitable, that most gardeners I would have thought would have tended in that direction. This is a sort of win win situation in the long run.
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The destruction in Turkey at the moment is horrifying.
They have borrowed money to build roads that far exceed the country's current or future needs. Whole mountains have disappeared.
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Now there are quite a few nurseries growing these plants from seed and success in establishing them is so much greater.
If this was true you'd expect the Western species to be just as common as those from the East Coast, yet that is certainly not the case...
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As far as I understand,any nursery carrying Lilium lijiangense, Lilium rosthornii or Helleborus thibetanus, are benefiting from her introductions even if they do not actually resell imported plants and there are many more.
Göte
She's introduced a lot of new (and undescribed) species of Corydalis, the two best known examples are probably C. panda and C. capitata... Many of her introductions have also ended up in tissue culture; C. 'Silver Spectre' (https://www.google.com/search?q=corydalis+silver+spectre&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=3B0pT4vcDM6L4gSGmfTUAw&biw=1024&bih=653&sei=3R0pT87ELa3V4QSXjZXVAw), C. temulifolia 'Chocolate Stars' (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=corydalis+chocolate+stars&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1702l2338l0l2484l6l1l0l5l5l0l68l68l1l6l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1024&bih=653&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Ex4pT8TrNPPY4QTkrdjuAw), C. 'Blackberry Wine' (https://www.google.com/search?pq=thalictrum+ichangense&hl=en&sugexp=pfwl&tok=QOWROM9vPdcaXuSfRLaTiA&cp=14&gs_id=1j&xhr=t&q=corydalis+blackberry+wine&safe=off&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1024&bih=653&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=bh4pT7z2GMb54QTcpsWlAw) and Thalictrum ichangense (https://www.google.com/search?pq=thalictrum+stars&hl=en&sugexp=pfwl&ds=i&cp=12&gs_id=4&xhr=t&q=thalictrum%20ichangense&um=1&safe=off&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1024&bih=653&wrapid=tljp132809478765300&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=SB4pT6DZKPKK4gSd5LSIBA) comes to mind.
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Yes - having mentioned Corydalis temulifolia elsewhere, I would be hypocritical to take too purist a stance and there is huge pleasure in growing many of these plants. Maybe it is difficult to take up an overgeneralised position, but we do tend to do this. What must be of value is building closer connections between horticulturists in different countries, with the prospect of more sustained cultivation and dissemination of plants (like what has happened in Turkey with cyclamen, and also as mentioned earlier in China too). After all it is the magnificence of the Chinese flora which attracts so many people to the country, and so many people to want to grow the plants.
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Asarum campaniforme is also one she introduced that was subsequently named. Most of her stuff was available in Japan long before is was available in the West. In fact, the obscenely high prices were originally from people importing the exorbitantly priced material from Japan.
If you are buying material from China without a collection number tied to it it is more than likely associated with Chen Yi. It is also my understanding that she does not pre-collect everything on the list and then send out the list to see what people want. Some of it is listed and then collected. That does not make wild collection better, but is it really any different if one digs material from the wild with a permit or without one? Its the same thing, its just the legally dug material has the permit cost factored into the price.
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I suppose there are some advantages to NZ consciences in that we are unable to import live plants (well we are but with long quarantine periods and costs reaching very many thousands of dollars for even a first few plants so that the practice would be totally unviable) and species such as Trillium or Arisaema or anything else for that matter, enter the country as seeds. Plants of what we already have are only swapped among friends or bought from small, local sources. So far as Trillium is concerned, the western species are common here among gardeners and especially alpine/woodland gardeners while the eastern species are rarely seen ever. The seed which has come of most, seems much more difficult to germinate and grow on, in my experience anyway.
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Now there are quite a few nurseries growing these plants from seed and success in establishing them is so much greater.
If this was true you'd expect the Western species to be just as common as those from the East Coast, yet that is certainly not the case...
perhaps the western species are just harder to market or to grow and so will remain less common despite propagation in cultivataion?
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Now there are quite a few nurseries growing these plants from seed and success in establishing them is so much greater.
If this was true you'd expect the Western species to be just as common as those from the East Coast, yet that is certainly not the case...
perhaps the western species are just harder to market or to grow and so will remain less common despite propagation in cultivataion?
I highly doubt that... The Western species I've grown have been very easy, and certainly admired by visitors when in flower. You can buy legally collected, decent quality plants from North Carolina and Tennessee for just $0.80/rhizome, it just doesn't make financial sense to spend 5+ years raising them from seeds.
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Just about all the pictures we see of Trillium on the Forum threads are of western species, especially chloropetalum.
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Just about all the pictures we see of Trillium on the Forum threads are of western species, especially chloropetalum.
But we're hardly an average selection of gardeners ;) Look at the selection at any European nursery, and you'll find that the species on offer are almost exclusively Eastern.
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Can you give me a few nursery examples please?
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I think this shows the danger of being too specific as well as overgeneralising! It is certainly my experience that the western trilliums are realtively easy from seed, but I haven't great experience of growing eastern species. But surely the principle that plants are better grown from seed and distributed this way is so much more environmentally sound than collecting plants in the wild that it should be encouraged as much as possible - and at the end one has to make a personal decision about this. After all gardening at its heart must have strong environmental foundations to do with sustainable uses of the world we live in - see my article in the AGS Bulletin.
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But surely the principle that plants are better grown from seed and distributed this way is so much more environmentally sound than collecting plants in the wild that it should be encouraged as much as possible - and at the end one has to make a personal decision about this.
Indeed, but to make that personal decision it's important to know all the facts, and I'm rather amazed that people aren't more aware of where most of the Trillium being sold actually come from... I am not saying there aren't a few nurseries raising Trillium from seeds, but they are few and far between.
Lesley;
It wouldn't be fair to post links to a select few nurseries when this is something everyone does, so I'll send them to you on PM.
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.......to make that personal decision it's important to know all the facts, and I'm rather amazed that people aren't more aware of where most of the Trillium being sold actually come from...
I don't grow Trilliums, but how are the people who do able to discover these facts? And likewise for other plants?
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A little research goes a long way, but its not always easy. I know for a fact Tony Avent at Plant Delights grows all his Trillium from seed -- I've seen the operation first hand.
The influx of most plants from China in the past decade is due solely to Chen Yi/Kaichen nursery. Think of Podophyllum, Diphylliea, Asarum spp., Polygonatum, Smilacina/Maianthemum, Hepatica yamatutai and henryi, Paris spp., Paeonia, Arisaema, Fritillaria, etc. The list goes on. For a short while there were many nurseries who imported, marked-up, and resold her material without much thought or care to identify it. The nurseries that offer a lot of these genera without collections numbers likely to have obtained there material via Chen Yi.
For all we know she pays for a permit which is no different than the resellers of Trillium in the eastern US. Some of these resellers also offer the associated woodland plants for very cheap also. One, at least, has been in operation in eastern Tennessee for over 30 years, collecting from the same land each year without noticeable harm to the populations of the species frequently sold; sulcatum, luteum, erectum, grandiflorum, and cuneatum.
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I don't grow Trilliums, but how are the people who do able to discover these facts? And likewise for other plants?
You could just ask them? With some it's blatantly obvious, a certain purveyor of rare plants used Chen Yi's pictures in his catalogue in the past, and misidentifications of hers are often carried on. With Trillium it's easier to tell after the fact, by looking at the size and age of the rhizome. Some nurseries can probably plead ignorance having bought the rhizomes from Dutch wholesalers like Eurobulb or Dix, but that doesn't make the plants themselves any less wild collected...
Aaron;
From what I've understood it's completely legal for Chinese citizens to collect wild plants on public lands, as long as they stay out of national parks. Collection for horticulture is obviously a relatively new thing, but they've traded in medicinal plants for hundreds if not thousands of years - some minorities apparently depend on this trade to survive.
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I don't grow Trilliums, but how are the people who do able to discover these facts? And likewise for other plants?
You could just ask them?
That presupposes I could believe the answers, if any.
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It wouldn't be fair to post links to a select few nurseries when this is something everyone does, so I'll send them to you on PM.
Thanks Arisaema, as you'll realise there's no possibility that I'll be supporting those or any other European nurseries because of our own MAF regulations but it would interest me to know who does sell Trilliums in the Northern Hemisphere. Many Americans say they can't be bought at all in the States so they MUST collect plants from the wild.
Do you grow T maculatum? If you would like a few seeds I have just picked a pod yesterday so very fresh. It is a good form with well coloured flowers and good leaf markings.
Lesley
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I suppose the ethics are identical in each case, where the Chinese collectors are concerned but frankly I'd rather see plants collected from the wild than bears and tigers trapped, chained and held for their "medicinal" attributes. Better not get into a further discussion here though.
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This thread has apparently been split in two. Where is the other bit please?
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This thread has apparently been split in two. Where is the other bit please?
It is here Lesley: http://www.srgc.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=8501.0
I split it off because it was nothing to do with Chen yi.