Easily available and/or common do not mean that something is not an invasive species in a different area, say something from the Southwest getting planted somewhere in trhe Northeast, for example. An intelligent move is to not plant something you don’t know what it is. If you know what it is and it’s not detrimental in your area, go for it. But it’s not racist or xenophobic to not chance introducing a mystery species into any area on purpose.
But it is racist and xenophobic when so much of the panic is specifically that the seeds are a nefarious plot by the eeeeevil China! to destroy America. (Don’t believe anyone is saying that? Look in this very thread for posts by someone with a username beginning with a letter between w and y.)
You may wish to re-read XT’s post, this time concentrating on certain adjectives and adverbs.
I reread them and I stand by my assessment.
lol yeah, they’re from wish/geek i could tell just by the labeling … the worlds heeziest grey/black market internet swap meet and no when they send them they don’t put usually put what they are and if they do its just "seeds"and so far the ones we’ve tried grew for a while but died out …
if you wanna get around various laws like region coding for phones tablets and such iis the place you go … although some of the counterfeit stuff they sell is better than the original… like they were selling these “no tangle hairbrushes” on tv for 19.99 late night tv style well someone found out their supplier and was selling them through geek (its an android app) for 8.95 … which is how we discovered them because we bought a few of the brushes
Tho its definitely buyer beware and also dont expect it there very fast…8 weeks is the usual shipping time for anything
geek i
oh that article was interesting and funny at the same time
interesting in the fact that I didn’t know its an American company but funny in the fact they’re saying they don’t know what type of stuff there selling just look at all those handheld game machines that are nothing but badly emulated 8/16 bit stuff on barely working machines (although I do admit the one I did buy worked as advertised but did nit have the 9000 games it claimed to have )…my post above still stands …
Then why are they being shipped from China? Presumably, if some entity wanted to give people free seeds, they could do it a little more locally. I wouldn’t plant unknown seeds anymore than I would eat random food left in my mail box.
Have you read one single word of these posts on “brushing”? Packaged seeds are small, light, and cheap, just like the other materials shipped by brushers. It isn’t a Chinese plot to destroy America with rouge grapefruits and sunflowers.
And they’re often not shipped from China. They might be from a Chinese company, but as others have said, the physical items might actually have come from a source nearby.
And I don’t for a moment believe that it’s a nefarious attempt to sabotage American agriculture via invasive species or diseases. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not an invasive species or diseased. Most invasive species and diseases spread without nefarious intent, just through sheer negligence and laziness. And it’s probably safe to say that, even if the folks doing this aren’t nefarious, they probably are negligent and lazy.
I, for one, despise red grapefruit.
There are some really nasty seed-borne diseases. And there are plants that are common and perfectly fine to plant in one part of the world that are dangerous invasives somewhere else.
It’s quite possible for this to be just a brushing scam, and for it nevertheless to be a really bad idea to plant the seeds. – or, I see, what Chronos just said; but I do want to emphasize it. People who are ignorant in this area often don’t take the dangers seriously, and that has caused a lot of problems.
Species identified so far include cabbage, hibiscus, lavender, mint, morning glory, mustard, rose, rosemary and sage (so we have at least half of a Scarborough Fair.) In addition are the citrus and sunflower noted here. So terrifying!
What’s the point in even sending something inside the envelope? Couldn’t the scammers just send an empty envelope for the purposes of shipping a package to enable them to write fake reviews?
Well, since you accuse me of saying stuff I didn’t I figured I might as well respond to this, as you don’t seem to be getting it. Yes, I read the posts on ‘brushers’ or ‘brushing’, but I already gave a response to why that doesn’t seem likely, to me anyway based on the evidence I’ve seen. In summary, to have a ‘brushing’ scam you need a prominent vendor. That’s the whole point…you send cheap things to people then you can show you shipped a lot of product our and are really a great company. Then you can create a bunch of fake accounts to give you likes and thumbs up and 5 star reviews. But this misses the mark on some of that, though it holds together on others.
But that said, you are missing the whole invasive species angle. Even if this is an upright scam (
), it’s STILL dangerous. And it doesn’t have to be coming from the CCP to be one. While the ‘end goal’ might be the scam you are some vehemently pushing, it STILL might be an ecological threat to the US and to all those other countries this has happened in.
No, I just think it is exaggerated overblown silly alarmism.
No, you SAID I was being racist and xenophobic, then you started mocking everyone who brought up concerns without actually seeming to think about their point. I’m not sure why you are being so vehement (in a GQ thread) about this, to be honest, or why you want to handwave away all concerns. Whether certain media are going over the top, I certainly don’t see anyone (including myself, though I might missing something) posting in this thread doing so, which smells of a strawman argument to me. If you want to take exception to things I (or others) actually said, and want to use logic or reason to disprove them, then that’s what this forum is for. But I’d like you to start with why people shouldn’t be concerned with invasive species, even if this is a brushing scam.
You posted that you couldn’t imagine any other reason that this was being done other than agriculture espionage by China. This is on top of the fact of how almost every post you make on this site is a long screed on how much you hate China.
At least they didn’t send the white grapefruit or we’d have a real problem. Much worse than a little rouge grapefruit.
I am not a farmer but a avid gardener and grow some citrus (satsumas - 3 varieties, tangerines - 2 varieties, kumquats - 2 varieties and a kaffir lime).
I am not a biologist and know only a fair bit about citrus. Since some of the seeds in question are Citrus, allow me to explain why the threat is real and imminent.
Huanglongbing citrus disease originated in China. It is also known as the Citrus Greening disease. Many citrus farmers in Florida have gone bankrupt due to this disease. By 2011, Florida had lost about 6000 jobs and about 250 million in citrus production. You can read more about it here : CitrusGreening.org
Texas and California - the other two states with sizable citrus production have put citrus quarantines in place, to control the spread of this disease. You cannot bring in seeds, scions or rootstocks from outside the quarantine zones without proper inspection / certification.
I live in Texas, in a citrus quarantine Zone that keeps ever expanding : https://www.thepacker.com/article/texas-expands-citrus-greening-quarantine-area
We have a local gardening group and we are legally not even allowed to trade Citrus seeds/plants. While mail ordering, we usually order budwood from Univeristy of California certified Huanglongbing free https://ccpp.ucr.edu/
Needless to say the USDA and states like Florida, Texas and California have spend 100s of millions of dollars fighting Huanglongbing. But the disease has taken its toll on Citrus industry and associated jobs.
And all it takes is a few infected seeds to destroy the efforts of millions over decades.
You are going to pay for that one.