Thanks to a Chinese and Korean fad, California's wild succulents are being poached and smuggled to Asia

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/10/china-shakes-the-world.html

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I guess the one unusual thing in Asian poaching of succulents is that it’s not supposedly a cure for limpdick or cancer.

And as noted in the original article, the economics of this make no sense given the shipping costs. That’s the one thing that’ll slow it.

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They ain’t getting my Succulents!

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dudleya do-right got his man

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Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just grow them in China, etc.?

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But, all the fake succulents sold in stores, the cheap ones that will never die? they’re all made in China. Plumbing the dumb depths, also known as

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Stealing when they should’ve been buying.

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It is cheaper to grow them in China. It’s happening, but it takes time for markets to change. The ones that we produce a ton of in the nursery industry here are the ones that are pretty common here in the wild. It’s weird that people are stealing those but I imagine it’s because nursery production always lags behind demand. Plus, it’s easier for a smuggling operation to tell someone that can’t differentiate species to just take them all and someone else will pick out the rare valuable ones and they’ll fraudulently sell the common ones like they do with seeds online.

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Stealing is still cheaper

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I think the economics are being looked at from an honest person’s POV. Those rare Dudleya can fetch a shit ton of money and you can sell the common ones fraudulently as rarer ones online for a better ROI. It may just be easier to tell the guys in the field to just collect everything and we’ll sort it later.

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Oo-oo oo-oo ah ah ah
Oo-oo oo-oo ah ah ah

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Oooooh, I saw a shop for succulents in SE Asia once fairly recently.
I thought by myself, that’s an awfully niche thing to limit your shop to. Didn’t know there had been a trend.
wait…no that I think of it. That shop’s already closed down.
Too bad… Never even noticed the fad before it imploded.

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So odd to be ripping them out of the ground when nearly all, if not all succulents can grow from a snipped leaf.

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