Hello All,
Probably the safest way to have "no conflicts of interest" is to limit our discussions to avoid all plants that are commercially available. Discussing commercially available plants or patented plants could be inadvertently helping the sale of that product.
Additionally, if members have associations with a nursery or institution in their user name, having their name listed could be inadvertently helping their sales. All member names could be changed to have an anonymous number. For example member "Jane Doe (Shady Pines Nursery)" could be changed to Member 12345.
This way we could have discussions without encouraging people to grow and buy plants or bulbs. The discussions could be purely scientific and nobody could benefit monetarily from our discussions. An Admin could monitor all discussions before they go out and all responses could be sanitized if "taboo" subjects are mentioned.
The question is... Do we want to go this far.
Personally, I enjoy the personalized monikers and our lively discussions about all types of plants - especially the new ones and where to buy them. I suppose there is a fine line between mentioning a newly developed Iris and where you might buy it and a member sending out an email that they are taking orders for a new $200 aril Iris that grows easily in clay and loves summer humidity.
I would like to think that part of our goal here is to encourage people to successfully cultivate plants. Part of that is helping people to find the plants. While it's fun to grow plants from seed, not everyone can afford to wait (sometimes 10 years) for something to bloom when starting from seed. And of course cultivars rarely come true from seed, so buying or trading for special selections is a good option.
The choice is ours. Do we want to discuss plants that people can obtain and grow?
Chris
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