Thursday, October 23, 2008

Random plant event: Neoregelia 'Fireball' offsetting


The rules about what I am allowed to take home with me from work have never been spelled out very specifically or precisely for me. I asked WCW about it after I'd been working for a month or so, and since then I've been kind of making it up as I go, bearing in mind that there's an element of goose-that-laid-the-golden-eggs to the situation and it's important not to take advantage of the situation, or give the appearance that I'm taking advantage of the situation either, as far as that goes.

The basic policy, as explained to me by WCW, is that anything that would otherwise be thrown away is fair game. Which, there are fuzzy lines there, because she and I are the ones that decide, for the most part, what gets thrown away. Sometimes there are emergency prunings and pinchings of plants which are not, strictly speaking, emergencies. [cough] But still. This is how I got my 'Fireball.'

I'm pleased that it's finally decided to send out a stolon. Eventually they can get huge --


-- though I think this takes a while. The ones we've divided at work have wasted no time in sending out stolons, but then, they have a much warmer, wetter environment to work with, and they've slowed down noticeably since it got cold.

There may be more coming soon about Neoregelia 'Fireball,' in the form of a plant profile, though it's maybe going to have to wait in line behind some other plants, for reasons which will be obvious once they're all written and start getting posted.

(Neoregelia 'Fireball' post is up.)


6 comments:

nilla|utanpunkt said...

Now, how nice is that, a workplace providing free plants! ;-). I wish.

Anonymous said...

Now that is a benefit to working at a nursery I would love, free plants!

Amanda said...

Sounds like some interesting ethical issues are involved there, to me - but at least you know the plants are going to a good home!

mr_subjunctive said...

Well, if it's a full-sized, sellable plant, I actually pay money for it and stuff. It's not like I take home anything and everything that I want. But cuttings, divisions, broken leaves or stems, and badly scorched plants would just get thrown in the trash anyway are fair game -- as I've noted before, we can't actually propagate every piece of propagatable plant material.

It also works the other way around sometimes; both WCW and I have brought in plants or cuttings of things that we had at home but the business couldn't get. All the Crassula muscosa, Begonia 'Texas Coffee Star,' and Hatiora salicornioides we've sold since my arrival have been from my own personal plants (and I'm working on building up a sellable amount of Synadenium grantii right now). So stuff cycles back and forth.

Aunt Debbi/kurts mom said...

I miss all the free plants I used to get while working at a nursery. I also liked being able to order things that were cool and getting first stab at them.

mr_subjunctive said...

Now that is definitely a perk, the first-stab thing. It's sometimes a problem regardless, because like I've said recently, it makes the boss nervous to have stuff around that's too different. But really, I can only think of one thing that has actually, definitely worked out badly: the Chamaedorea metallicas have not sold, and it's been close to a year now. Most of the other weird stuff has at least broke even for us.

It's slightly annoying, though, in one respect: there are not many surprises in the availability lists anymore. I suspect people are cutting back on the unusual stuff and concentrating on the known sellers, because of the economy. Pretty much everything I could get for the upcoming October order is the same stuff that was on the list in March, June and August.