Cacti for sale in Europe/Scandinavia- were do they come from?

[Mrs.Green]

Buying the Melo ( with no roots ) and an E.subdenudata in very large pots ( both from Plantagen/Plantasjen) I began to wonder were they grew up. Both were obiously repotted in these huge pots, since I could clearly see the difference in the soil when I lifted them out of the pots.

I don’t have any specialist dealers near by, in fact the only one I know of is in the other end of the country. So my suppliers of cacti are the grocerystores, a couple of florists and the already mentioned Plantagen ( which is a huge garden chainstore) .

Some plants seems to come from Netherland but are they really ‘born and breed’ there? I guess raising cacti ( fast) in Netherland would be rather expencive since they surely must use heating in winter ? A Melo for instance like mine 15 cm high with a cephalium wouldn’t that be a very expencive plant, grown in colder climates? Or are they ‘cheating’ and graft and degraft slow growers?

[Aiko]

If they come from the Netherlands, they were grown most likely on the Canary Islands (it's Spanish, so still EU) to maturity and then shipped over to Rotterdam and then distributed throughout Europe.

[esp_imaging]

The Netherlands has large and extremely efficient greenhouse production of a huge range of plants and flowers for sale and food production.
The big areas of grey rectangles are all commercial greenhouses:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nieuw ... d4.7677245
And at night:
https://petapixel.com/2020/01/30/aerial ... -at-night/
And here's an example of how the scale of production enables energy saving methods:
https://petapixel.com/2020/01/30/aerial ... -at-night/

[Mrs.Green]

If they come from the Netherlands, they were grown most likely on the Canary Islands (it's Spanish, so still EU) to maturity and then shipped over to Rotterdam and then distributed throughout Europe.

Thank you Aiko. That makes sense.

The Netherlands has large and extremely efficient greenhouse production of a huge range of plants and flowers for sale and food production.
The big areas of grey rectangles are all commercial greenhouses:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nieuw ... d4.7677245
And at night:
https://petapixel.com/2020/01/30/aerial ... -at-night/
And here's an example of how the scale of production enables energy saving methods:
https://petapixel.com/2020/01/30/aerial ... -at-night/

Thank you esp-imaging. Interesting links. Have to say I am very glad I don’t live near by.. As mentioned in these articles , the light pollution must be horrible. Do you know for a fact that they massproduce cacti for sale too? I ask because as I understood from these articles its food and’common’ plants that are grown?

[Steve-0]

It would stand to reason that somewhere under one of those roofs lies a cactus nursery. In a few minutes perusal I did find a Bromeliad Specialist greenhouse. So my deduction is that if bromeliads are mass produced there, then why not cacti?

Or...if the Canary Islands are a more logical location...then there they would be produced en masse.

[esp_imaging]

I'm sure Aiko is correct, in that most of the cacti sold from the Netherlands may be raised in the Canary isles (or also mainland Spain), but I'd bet there is at least some large-scale production in the Netherlands.

[Aiko]

It would stand to reason that somewhere under one of those roofs lies a cactus nursery. In a few minutes perusal I did find a Bromeliad Specialist greenhouse. So my deduction is that if bromeliads are mass produced there, then why not cacti?

A few of those greenhouses seen in the link of esp_imaging is run by Ubink (https://ubink.nl), a well know cactus nursery in the Netherlands. Partly I do think they grow their cacti (from seed?) themselves, but that aimed at growing smaller ones for as far as I can tell. Or where they grow plants from cuttings. And it is the place where they probably stick googly eyes into plants and spraypaint them in bright colours, I guess. Ubink is a wholesale grower for garden centres and besides the annual open day not open to private visitors.

The big plants for sure have not grown up there but were imported from more sunny and warmer places where they will grow much faster.

[teo]

I have noticed that many (small) succulent plants (at Plantagen at least) originates from Denmark - now that they have a plant passport label (marked -DK)

[DaveW]

As Aiko says the Dutch raise a lot of their larger plants in the Canary Islands, however they produce a lot of the smaller garden centre plants in Holland. This link was a visit by Juan Acosta and Florencia Senoret to Van der Bos nursery in Holland. Juan used the name "Spiniflores" on the Web and used to sell cactus seed with the JA numbers. As you can see the process is largely automated and the Dutch raise seed by the millions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JdGny9_bjM

Even China now grows cacti for export just like Holland. Where they are exported to I do not know. But presumably it is easier to get CITES certification for large commercial batches of the same species rather than an amateur importing a few different species because I believe I read you need expensive separate permits for every species imported, not just one to cover a mixed batch?

https://gardenofeaden.blogspot.com/2014 ... -from.html

How the Plant Passport Scheme is going to work nobody seems sure since all Cacti are either on Appendix I or II for CITES purposes.

[Caudexguy99]

The difficult part of buying plants overseas is that you don't know how many stops it has been before getting to you. I see a lot of Europeans buying wholesale from other parts of the country like the Canary Islands before selling online via Ebay. For sensitive plants like Melocacti, that's a lot of transporting and messing with the roots. By the time they get to the final buyer they probably are already dying. Other cacti that are easy to root may not be bothered as much by this transporting process.

[Hero878]

I noticed that the cactus I get from my local plant shop in the UK get most of their stock from Italian wholesalers like cactusmania.it and Giromagi who have massive cactus nurseries in Italy.

[NiklasTyreso]

I don’t have any specialist dealers near by, in fact the only one I know of is in the other end of the country. So my suppliers of cacti are the grocerystores, a couple of florists and the already mentioned Plantagen ( which is a huge garden chainstore) .

You probably could order from Wermland Desert Plants, in Sweden close to Norways border. He still sell, not entirely retired.

[Mrs.Green]

I don’t have any specialist dealers near by, in fact the only one I know of is in the other end of the country. So my suppliers of cacti are the grocerystores, a couple of florists and the already mentioned Plantagen ( which is a huge garden chainstore) .

You probably could order from Wermland Desert Plants, in Sweden close to Norways border. He still sell, not entirely retired.

Thank you NiklasTyreso. Tempting but I am not sure if its legal to buy live plants( not seeds) from Sweden to Norway?

[teo]

I think the same rules apply as from other EU countries - although Norway isn't formally in the EU I think their import/export rules apply

[keith]

C&J Cactus Nursery in Vista CA is supposed to be pretty big but wholesale only.