Recently I was in Lowe’s and I saw this.
While I was at Lowe’s today I saw a plastic flower hot glued to this cactus to make it look “prettier”.
Man, why do people alter these creatures to make them more “appealing” to the eye?!
I wonder about the bling it on, shiny new, must have, cultivars from horticulture.
Which disappoint the ‘associated’ biodiversity. Now I have learnt to plant locally indigenous in my garden - but was hugely disappointed when I first realised ‘double’ flowers forfeit pollen and nectar for more petals to serve as human eye candy. It is still a ‘real’ and ‘living’ flower, but not to pollinating insects.
Unfortunately there are tons of examples of this by scammers altering plant/flower colors (often quite badly photoshopped) all over certain websites trying to sell seeds for stuff like blue strawberries, black roses, purple flytraps, rainbow-colored whatever to unsuspecting customers.
That seems to be quite the trend - I’ve seen this, too.
I’ve seen animals in so many colors from rainbow snails, teal ball pythons, even blueberry colored tigers all over Pinterest. Even if you look on Google those pictures will show up! Seeing the Cedar Waxwing honestly surprised me because this was the first time I’ve seen this advertised for products.
the HOA thread talked about how alterations occur to make it ‘prettier’ for a bit starting around this post as a comment of how box stores make things ‘prettier’ so maybe that’s the way around HOA’s! Lots of examples ensued.
Sorry everybody… original observation with comments:
The only legitimate black rose I’m aware of Aeonium arboreum ‘Zwartkop’.
Oh wow, I was wondering if anyone else had brought this up. Thanks for provided the link!
With this scam, does the victim never receive the strawberries, or just ones that are poorly dyed?
They’re seeds so by the time they grow enough to produce fruit (which won’t be blue), the seller is long gone.
I wonder how many kids ordered Sea Monkeys thinking that they really would look like the cartoon:
When in reality, they look like this:
If you could find the fine print, the disclaimer was there: “Illustration is fanciful. Does not depict Artemia.” But how likely was a kid to notice that after being bedazzled by the picture and the advertising copy?
Luckily my father was smarter than six-year-old me. ‘We’ bought a couple of packets of brine shrimp eggs and a small hatchery. I was fascinated but when I lost interest they still made great food for my aquarium fish.
Pretty sure they did a South Park episode about this, if that sort of comedy is your thing.
“Bonsai” blue strawberries! I think any time there is the word bonsai in a description of seeds for sale, there’s 100% scam going on.
Most of these “seeds” don’t grow at all. Reading the reviews on these seed sellers speaks volumes - lots of complaints about total lack of germination and wanting their money back. If any of the packets actually contain viable seeds, they grow into some random weeds but not what the package said.
Hah, my parents refused to order anything from the ads in comic books but I always assumed these were some kind of weird toy like the foam eggs you put in water and they “grow” into creatures. I only learned recently that there were actual living creatures being sent out. If I had known, I would have made a stronger effort to pester my parents to get some for us!
It ATE the supplier. That’ll learn you to cultivate dangerous plants!
