serious succulent hybridizer selling seeds?!

[Epiphyte]

Also, I recall reading a post somewhere a few years back written by someone who said he knew DW, and went on to describe how DW had thousands of hybrids, and saved the best, and discarded (believe it or not!) MANY of his "rejects" into a canyon off his property. The story goes, he did this until he caught wind that others were scrounging his castoffs in that canyon, after which he started destroying them instead.

hybridizers destroy tons of perfectly viable plants because doing so maintains their reputation of only producing the highest quality plants. "producing" isn't the right word, since any plant they grow from seed is a product. so maybe "supplying" is a better word. or "releasing"?

if dick wright (dw) had simply given his culls away to local public schools, or sold them for less money, then the market would have been flooded with his subpar hybrids and his reputation would have been tarnished. you'd walk around a random socal neighborhood and you'd see his subpar hybrids on parkway strips and it would make you sad. even lawn would be preferable. hummingbirds might disagree, but it's not like their preferences truly matter.

recently i learned of a serious haworthia hybridizer named renny wong (rw). surprisingly, she sells seeds (website / ebay)! she's flooding the market with so many subpar hybrids! does she not know how much this tarnishes her reputation? does she not understand how much this harms the haworthia hobby? all those poor kids out there, buying her seeds hoping to find a winner, just like so many poor kids buy a deck of baseball cards hoping to find a winner. but the chances of finding a winning haworthia is less than the chances of winning the lottery, so the poor kids will be scared for life and will never want to grow haworthias ever again. the haworthia hobby is doomed.

a few weeks back i was foraging a grove of freeway fig trees and found a big tree with some variegated branches...



this fig tree and all the others were planted by critters. they work so hard to flood the market with subpar fig trees. well, except for this variegated one. and maybe a "few" others.

john boggan has a blog entry... strength in numbers... where he shared this quote...

Breeding is, a lot of the time, a numbers game. The more you can grow, the more cool things you’ll find. - joseph tychonievich

professional breeders, like those employed by altman plants, have huge spaces to grow out tons of seedlings to select for the coolest ones. but they don't have as much space as the combined space of all the windowsills and balconies of hobbyists. and the more hobbyists, the larger the combined space, and the more cooler things that will be found.

while coding remains an essentially solitary activity, the really great hacks come from harnessing the attention and brainpower of entire communities. The developer who uses only his or her own brain in a closed project is going to fall behind the developer who knows how to create an open, evolutionary context in which feedback exploring the design space, code contributions, bug-spotting, and other improvements come from hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people. - Eric Steven Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar

if anyone in socal is interested, renny is going to do a popup...

Sat & Sun, September 28-29, 9am - 4pm

LA Succulents
11226 Christy Ave
Lake View Terrace, CA 91342

[Agave_fan]

So you have never purchased a hybrid?

Or are you suggesting that someone's personal preference on what is a 'justified' hybrid should only be sold, no seeds?

[Melt in the Sun]

I think the point is more that if you sell seeds (even from amazing plants) you don't know what you're going to get. Renny's plants are big bucks and I imagine the seeds are too, but if you grow them you're unlikely to get something as beautiful. You might like them just fine, they might be nice plants, without culling 999/1000 you won't get the spectacular forms that she sells. Is it disingenuous then, to sell seeds? Perhaps. Does it tarnish your reputation to do so? I'm with Epiphyte; I think so.

[Agave_fan]

It felt like there were a couple points in the post, including the market being saturated with subpar haworthia.

I would hope that someone buying insect pollinated seeds from random plants or where one plant is shown and the other is unknown would be doing so for the fun of growing, not expecting a $2000 seedling to emerge but perhaps that common sense expectation of others is too high.

I will agree that some people that purchase seeds pollinated from random plants in her collection might be disappointed with an unfair expectation when they do not end up with a high-end seedling, but short of Renny putting a ‘do not place this plastic bag over your head’ warning on all her seed sales, not sure what she can do? Or is that the suggestion, Renny should not be able to sell her hybrid seeds or needs to place a warning that the seeds she sells are likely to end up as ‘subpar’ as suggested?

As someone that has known Renny for years, I have purchased both plants and seeds from her and I never felt her seed prices were out of line. In fact, I felt her prices were pretty good because back when I was growing haworthia, I could get 100 picta seed for $30 and never had an issue with germination (she carefully tracks collection dates) or picta seed being from picta ect. I ended up with a lot of nice plants (some even variegated) from her seeds and like many of her other customers, have been happy doing business with her for years. Perhaps her seeds are a lot higher now (what isn't), not sure.

As far as subpar, I did not get one spindly, weak, malformed or disease prone seedling from any of the seeds I purchased from Renny. Although I understand the point being made, I guess I take exception to the subpar title being based on someone's personal aesthetic preferences and unrealistic expectations that randomly pollinated plants should produce seedlings that look just like the nicest plants on a website. I never once had this expectation.

Renny hand pollinates only a small percentage of her seeds, and you typically do not see these seeds listed for sale or she might toss some in her mixes. Her seeds are usually described as naturally pollinated by insects and hummingbirds where the seed plant or a group of seed plants is shown, and it is stated that the pollen plant is unknown. I know others that have purchased her seeds and I do not remember anyone stating they were disappointed with subpar plants, we all just had fun having the opportunity to grow out a lot of seeds that we otherwise could not get.

Some people are unrealistic and difficult to please and I have seen unfair reviews of other seed sellers on websites including one where someone had sown some seeds 5 days before and left a negative review that their seeds had not germinated and yet, I have not seen complaints with Renny's sales. In addition to her own website, Renny has been selling on eBay for years with over 24k sales and a 100% positive feedback rating and not one negative comment I could find. I think it is a little unfair to condemn the actions of selling hybrid seeds based on a guess of what other people's expectations might be, especially since the numbers support people are having a positive experience.

Now, as far as the 'poor kids' buying Renny's seeds hoping to find a winner that will be scarred for life and never want to grow haworthia again which dooms the hobby, I think we just need better parenting. I know this was likely facetious but I believe that promoting unrealistic expectations in life, is not in anyone's best interest. Perhaps a realistic sit-down discussion centered around the basics of open pollination and the probability of that winning haworthia while letting little Johnny know that not everything in life will feed neatly into his unrealistic expectations might be the best course of action to prevent future scarring?

I have not been to Renny’s website for a while as I have not worked with haworthia for a couple years (still keep some of them, no longer pollinate or grow them), but she used to put a disclaimer on her variegated seed mentioning that variegated seeds do not always produce variegated seedling. Now, she did sell them for a bit more, but at least the disclaimer was there. She also used to remove the flower stalks from a lot of plants in an attempt to naturally produce better hybrids by eliminating those she felt were less attractive in shape/color/form. Not sure if she still does that but I would assume she does?

Renny has been selling seeds for well over a decade and I have not heard anything negative about her reputation until this post. I know ISI has tissue cultured some of her plants and many people regard her highly when it comes to her knowledge and experience with haworthia, I have heard no one suggesting her reputation is or should be downgraded based on selling hybrid seeds. Interestingly, my first windowed haworthia was a renny hybrid that was sold to me 7 years ago by a well established and well respected succulent nursery in Austin that purchased and grew out some of the hybrid seed being condemned in this thread. If it is okay for nurseries and other establishments to play around growing these hybrids, why isn't this fair for all?

I guess I just do not see Renny doing anything different than others that are well known in their specific plant expertise such as Little One Plant Nursery selling their Euphorbia francoisii hybrid seeds which I have also purchased and ended up with some really nice francoisii from these hybrid seeds as well.

I am hoping that Renny’s pop up was cited in this post for positive reasons and hopefully people will be respectful if they attend and not bombard this very nice and passive lady with criticism for selling hybrid seeds as it took 9 years since her last pop up for her to do this one.

Please know that I am not offended by this thread nor opposing opinions on this topic, I am just passionate when it comes to some of my own opinions and I realize my up-front style of typing can come off as aggressive to some, just know this is not my intent. Although I do not see anything wrong with Renny or anyone else selling hybrid seeds and I realize I am likely in the minority on this side of the topic, I would not disagree with the suggestion of reminders on their websites or the seed sales themselves that hybrid seeds are a lottery where the chance of winning that super nice seedling is super slim. Perhaps we should add a disclaimer to those baseball card sales as well...