Buyer Beware -Part 2
James Waddick (Wed, 10 Sep 2003 07:45:51 PDT)

Dear All;
I just moved soap boxes from ranting about Standard Bulb
Treatments not suitable for all bulbs. But I have already stepped to
another soap box for a new tale of "bulb danger".

Again I won't berate the large Dutch growers or an individual
seller, but instead relate my own personal experience and let you
draw conclusions.

Yesterday's mail brought the catalog for Peter DeJager Bulb
Co. The catalog is two parts; the first a slick color brochure of 16
pages illustrating about 560 postage-stamp-size bulb flowers; the
second part is a pretty home made price list that's a bit hard to
follow. No further comment on part 2.

Part one-the color brochure is pretty neat to see all those
color pictures across the pages. Being a it of a Lycoris nut (I said
'a bit!!") I went to those pictures to see if they were actually
selling L. chinensis or L. aurea as these are often confused names.
There are pictures labelled as L. radiata, L. squamiera and L. aurea
at the top of the page. Looking closely I wasn't certain of the ID of
L. aurea, looking more closely the color of L. squamigera seemed far
too pink. Then it Struck me - GASP!!!

The three different species were actually THE SAME PHOTO- two
mirror images and 'Photoshop'-colored to fit the name: Red L.
radiata, Bright pink , reversed L. squamigera and Yellow L. aurea
reversed back!! Absolutely identical pictures, totally computer
manipulated. Then I wasn't sure that any were actually the species
they named.

This sure got me thinking. If the company would be so
outrageous to foist doctored pictures in the catalog, what would they
send? This is a very misleading and disturbing practice. I got to
looking at more pictures and although none jumped out as similarly
doctored, I then thought hard if I even wanted to place an order.

I hear rumors about practices of wanton substitution and use
of incorrect names since American bulb buyers are not as
discriminating or complain less than others. Well I plan on
complaining and will not order. I can't relate any info on the
quality or identity of bulbs they actually sell, but I sure do not
like this practice one bit. Enough to tell others Buyer Beware!

Still fuming Jim W.
--
Dr. James W. Waddick
8871 NW Brostrom Rd.
Kansas City Missouri 64152-2711
USA
Ph. 816-746-1949
E-fax 419-781-8594

Zone 5 Record low -23F
Summer 100F +