Oh my thanks! You're welcome. I resisted getting one of these for the longest time. Believe it or not, a Billietiae before these went into tissue culture (about a year ago) sold for up to $200, and usually it wasn't a whole plant it was a cutting off someone's established plant that you had to baby and root and get going. The variegated forms were selling for $500 or more. Those have yet to come out in TC, only the green form so far.
I resisted buying a Billie for that reason. The cost, and the fact that I need another climbing Philo like I need a hole in the head. But we went down to EFG Orchids for their annual Octoberfest sale on Oct 1 and they had nice TC plants for $16.00 so I got one. I'm gonna get it on a pole soon.
It's important to know this, just so you know....
All the plants that are coming out now in the aroid genera into grocery stores, box stores, independent nurseries, Etsy, eBay etc are all tissue culture. All the alocasias, anthuriums, philodendrons, syngoniums, etc are all TC now.
The only exceptions to this are plants that are grown from seed (which you can buy from some collectors and collector owned nurseries), plants like Amorphophallus that grow from tubers etc)
TC has been around since the 1960's. If someone tries to sell you a plant (or a cutting off a plant) and advertises it as (NOT TC) it usually actually is TC. Their original plant that they propagated is 99% always an old TC plant. But they may be too uneducated to know that. They think because THEY bought it as a cutting from someone else, grew it and propped it to sell, that it somehow isn't TC anymore...?
Nope. Progeny of a TC plant is still a TC plant, just a generation or more removed.
Even many seed grown plants trace roots back to TC parents.
Unless you are buying from a collector who actually went out into the jungle in Indonesia or South America and collected a plant or collected the seeds off a wild plant, or imported one naturally grown, brought it back and propagated it for sale, or from a nursery like Ecuagenera who actually maintains decades old breeding stock plants at the 5 compound growing operation in Ecuador that they propagate for sale (but at the same time they also do sell some TC plants for things like Alocasia, syngoniums etc) you are buying a TC plant.
We need to feel lucky that these plants are actually back in TC now. Many many ornamental species were scrapped from TC houses in the period after the big recession that started in 2008. They just couldn't sell them (even at what we would consider cheap prices compared to prices now) because people had to conserve money and stopped buying them. So we are lucky TC plants are back.
