I had a Chinese gentleman in here who wanted me to show him how to pollinate
an orchid and to explain how flasking was done. I told him the internet had
lots of pages devoted to this and he told me his English was not very good.
(It was not very good, no.) Anyway I asked him what language he spoke and
he said Mandarin, so I told him there had to be LOTS of sites in Mandarin
that explained how to flask orchids because orchids are flooding out of
China like oil is flooding in but he said that 'they' consider this
information to be proprietary so it is NOT easy to find it on websites in
china. I thought this was odd and have no way to know if it is true or
not.

Mick, I am about ready to freak out and write a whole book on your ass.

"Mick Fournier" wrote in message
...
Keith,

Al will always be MY barometer. On the day he only writes one sentence to
answer a simple question... then I will know he finally freaked out in
total and we are all in deep spores. So far, it looks like we are all
fairly safe for today.

If you want my assessment on whether there is "still" real money in
orchids then my simple answer is "no". The Asians will own this industry
completely with their throw-away mass-produced hybrids in another two
years. But to doublecheck let's find an old Venezuelan, Hawaiian or
Columbian orchid grower and ask them where the overall market is headed.

Mick