Fooled by a Wildflower Scam, Left With So Many Questions

Living where I do in southeast Louisiana, I’m well aware of plant rustlers who do things like dig up and sell all the native carnivorous plants on Instagram. These people have pushed our local pitcher plants to near extinction. Don’t buy this stuff. I never see a pitcher plant in the wild anymore. They’ve all been stolen to sell on Facebook Marketplace or maybe to the garden center of the local big box store.

In fact, at the very outdoor “plant sale” where I just bought the wildflowers in the top picture, I saw a guy set up to sell Venus Fly Traps out of the tailgate of his truck.

I can’t prove it, but those plants were poached. I know it in my gut.

Should have turned around and gone home right then and there.

I’ve also stumbled upon mushroom rustlers collecting oyster mushrooms in Fontainebleau State Park. That species used to sell for big money to restaurants and local grocers. Needless to say, it has been a very long time since I spotted an oyster mushroom growing in that park.

Heck, now I don’t even see it in the grocery anymore. For all I know, it’s effectively extinct. At least as a local wild species.

There are hundreds of millions of people living in the United States. If even a small number of them starts foraging — but let me stop right here, because “foraging” sounds so innocent. They’re not “foraging.” They’re not feeding themselves out of hunger.

They’re poaching things to sell.

In other words, they’re taking wild species out of our wild — often endangering the continued existence of the species and all others that depend upon it.

All for a few extra bucks to line their own pocket.

I’m in no mood to hear the excuses.

But you figure you know who those people are. You figure you can avoid them because they’re stealing the valuable stuff. The carnivorous plants. The succulents. The mushrooms.

We’re in danger of losing all that stuff because so-called foragers teach others that there’s money to be made taking those rare plants and fungi out of the wild.

But there’s an easy way to fight back against that. Don’t buy a wild plant that sells for big money. There’s too large an incentive for people to steal it.

It’s too much money for too little risk.

After all, what jury’s going to convict somebody for rustling a plant? What prosecutor is going to prosecute it?

But you don’t think about these things when they’re charging peanuts for the plant in question. You figure it’s the real deal because you think it wouldn’t be worth somebody’s time to hunt it down and dig it up.

For sure, I never thought I’d need to worry about the source of something called Texas Tickseed.

C’mon. She’s selling them for $9 a plant, pot and all.

And it sounds so innocent. A nice lady drops some seeds in some soil and some baby plants sprout, and she brings them to her little card table to sell with a smile and a story.

“Oh, it’ll be beautiful. It has a yellow flower with a maroon heart that pulls in the bees and the butterflies.”

All right. Sold. It sounded perfect for a certain spot near my patio.

But then it bloomed, and I really looked at it, and I realized what it was.

Texas Tickseed is Coreopsis, a local wildflower I see growing here and there on the side of the road or in various empty lots.

So did she really drop some seeds in the soil, or did she just scoop it up from where it was growing wild in the ground?

The thing is, it really is beautiful. And I don’t care about the $9.

But I hate the idea that I might have paid somebody cash money to take something wild out of the ground. Rewarding wild plant rustlers and giving them a financial incentive to rustle more plants is the exact opposite of what I want my life to be about.

I will be making no more informal plant purchases from “nice ladies.”

The thought of every flowering plant being stripped from every tiny strip of green is too awful to even think about.

Resources

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has an information sheet online, “Buyer beware: avoid buying poached Venus flytrap plants,” by Lilibeth Serrano, available for you to read here.

The Living Desert Zoo talks about plant poaching, with an emphasis on cacti, a family of plants under threat since at least the 1980s. Their article is here: “Where Did You Get That Plant? The Threats of Illegal Plant Poaching.”

Author's Note

This story was previously published on April 17, 2023 in Weeds & Wildflowers, a Medium publication. If you like reading these stories outside paywalls, please consider leaving me a <3 or a comment. Thanks!