Ursula said: Regarding the Lophophora - 
https://www.kakteen-haage.de/i...
Ah, I bought plants online once. I paid tenfold for what it costs to buy live. Some 10-15 euros were the plants themselves. Some 30 euros for for the shipping. And because the plant worlds got a severe case of the -stupids- thanks to CITES and their restrictions, I also had to pay for a document- a phytosanitary pass. Now normally, stuff bellow 45 euros is tax free(keep in mind, I do this with rocks, parts and I used to with seeds), BUT, the phytosanitary pass had to be included in price total of the package(despite the fact it has no commercial value whatsoever, and it is an ordinary piece of paper simply attached to the plant package). Now, due to CITES you HAVE to have that pass for it to pass borders(because of nature health reasons and whatnot). Now, with the sum total of 70 something euros...you have to pay taxes. But before you even get to that, I had to go to the phytosanitary committee to give their approval for the package. Which of course was not fun to do(difficult contacting them). Had to wait for that, to be charged some 18% of the total price + extra which made those 10-15 euro plants...100 euro plants. And get this, most of them were bare root, and with damaged roots to boot. Out of them, a gift mammillaria had nothing, and died within a month. Echinocactus texensis followed suit. Graptopetalum bellum held out a bit longer, but it died as well. All I was left with were to pachycereus marginatus plants, which just barely recovered from a severe case of scale. I lost one, donated the other to the botanical garden.
So overall, not a good experience. That would be the mostly full story. A christmas carol if I ever told one. My second takeaway was that seed growing cacti was not worthwhile- they had a fairly poor germination rate, and kept loosing them to fungi in the later attempts. And that was before they amped up the restrictions to seeds to. So If I am getting a lophophora, it will be the Han Solo way....
