What is that plant?

The latest issue of Grower Talks just turned up in my mailbox. This is a trade magazine for the growers who supply retail nurseries. In the last couple of issues it’s the ads, in particular, which have interested me – especially the ads for plants.

For there’s a definite trend towards not telling us what the plants advertised actually are.

In the latest Grower Talks there’s a double page spread advertising Sun Parasol, illustrating all the eight different colors noting that they’re from Suntory, the people who brought us Million Bells (they’re callibrachoas, by the way)… but what are these Sun Parasols? The flowers in the pictures seem to have a tube… and five petals: Thunbergias… Plumbagos perhaps… in new colors? Nowhere, nowhere at all, in the double page ad does the ad actually tell us what these plants are. There’s a picture that illustrates what looks like shrub in a container… Are they container plants? Are they hardy in some areas? What are they, exactly? Why don’t you tell us? Is it because they only thrive in a few parts of the country but you want everyone else to buy them anyway? Surely, we must be told?

Turns out they’re Mandevilla hybrids, and in most of the country you’ll enjoy them for one summer – then wallop, the frost will kill them.… It doesn’t say so in the ad, but if you take the trouble to go to the website you’ll find out. And there you’ll find a slightly blundering attempt to promote their distinctiveness.

Then, later in the same issue of the same magazine there’s an ad entitled: Diamond Frost – The Original. The original what? Doesn’t tell us… Now, I’ve grown it, I know it’s a frost-tender euphorbia – but unless you look closely at the page alongside, which doesn’t look like an ad at all and seems entirely unassociated with the ad for Diamond Frost, you’d never even know it was a euphorbia – especially as it doesn’t look like our preconceived idea of what a euphorbia should look like.

And it’s not just in trade magazines that this happens. So, what are they up to?:
Question: Why are they deliberately, and with deception aforethought, not telling us what these plants actually are?
Answer: 1) Because they just want to sell them. And if it’s obvious that they’re mandevillas everyone will know they will only thrive above 45F and fewer people will buy them.
Answer: 2) Because they want to promote the brand, Sun Parasol, above all else… Which is another way of saying that they just want to sell more plants.

I know... Times are hard… Nurseries and plant breeders want to sell plants… But this is a disservice to both nurseries and home gardeners.