A few interesting plants from the ex-job:
They were selling Calliandra emarginata as a bonsai (or at least a bonsish; I don't think they've ever had actual bonsai bonsai), which guarantees that I will never buy it, but it's an interesting plant. No clue what they're like to grow indoors; I don't even have any idea what they're like to grow outdoors.
I've had mostly-bad experiences with the Kalanchoe genus in general, and consistently bad experiences with Kalanchoe luciae specifically, in the past, so this wasn't particularly tempting, but it was new (to me), and I can't argue that it's not a cool-looking plant.
I don't know whether this is K. luciae or K. thyrsiflora, and it appears no one else does either: Google results are split about 50/50. The tag, for the record, said K. thyrsiflora, not that that means much.
Loropetalum chinensis is another bons-ish; I include it here mostly because I'd never heard of it before and it's kind of pretty.
I intend to try this plant someday. I've had some ups and downs lately with footed ferns (two of my three Davallias have taken a recent hard turn for the worse, over nothing in particular that I can see; one has died as a result), but Phlebodium aureum is one of my favorite plants, and Polypodium grandiceps seems to be working for me so far, so P. formosanum seems worth a try even so.
It's possible that the correct name is Phlebodium formosanum, not Polypodium formosanum; Glasshouse Works gives both names but appears to favor Phlebodium. If that's the case, then I'm even more interested.
Finally, Philodendron 'Pink Princess.' For most of the last few years, I haven't seen it for sale anywhere around here (I think I saw them at Wallace's once), and now all of a sudden the ex-job has gotten them on two separate shipments, as 6" (shown) and also as 4". It's an interesting-looking plant, but I'm not terribly interested in 'Pink Princess' because it's super expensive, and everything I've heard about it suggests that it's really slow-growing. The two things are probably related.
I don't remember what the ex-job wanted for the 4-inch plants, but it was definitely over $10, maybe something like $15. They paid a lot to get them in, I understand (don't know how much, but I know how they calculate these things, and the retail prices reflect wholesale), but $10 for a 4-inch tropical plant is never going to seem acceptable to me.
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