Aw. That's unfortunate. LOL Pretty ballsy to steal the Epiphytica photo.

I love the way the rest of her listings are various Hoya carnosa and compacta cultivars, with their identities all swapped.

This is a good example of a vendor who should stick to labeling their specimens "Hoya" and call it a day. Because that's clearly the extent of their familiarity with the genus. And probably, someone with that little attention to detail shouldn't be selling plants at all. It doesn't take that much effort to figure out whether you have a KQ or a KP.

I also found her price points pretty hilarious, given what she was selling. The people who are going to be affected are probably those who arrived there looking for a different plant, and found the "heart shaped leaves" appealing. It's unfortunate, but I guess none of us really made it through our first year of Hoya collection without making at least one purchase that later seemed very stupid to us. And at least these shoppers are already on the internet, so it's a bit easier to do simultaneous research, versus if you're in a physical store.

Holy Cow, it just sold! No!!

I guess someone really wanted a Krimson Parasite.

You know once I was shopping online for orchids and I found a vendor that is about three hours from me. This vendor sells really unusual orchid species so I like to check out their site often. Well one of the photos if of my Bulbophyllum cocoinum, I know it's my photo because I had to set the plant up on a wooden blow to raise it up for the photo. I never did mention the photo situation because I did not know what to say. Still I was kinda shocked that they did not ask me first, especially seeing as the photo came directly from my Flickr page.

Ebay is a whole other issue. RARE = something common that you can buy any garden centre. Prices can be insanely high but people still seem to buy. I occasionally get plants from Ebay but I know enough to avoid getting ripped off.

Too funny, GG! My head did actually come very close to exploding when I saw that it had sold because I was so angry on behalf of the buyer...but I've since thought about it & while I have made mistakes, like getting caught in the heat of the moment & bidding too high on an item, I have never (to my knowledge) purchased a completely different plant because I try to make my purchases with knowledge & if that buyer didn't do that, well, it was their responsibility so...but the seller was still VERY slimy in every way for doing that. I don't know how they sleep at night.
Mike, the same thing happened to me about 6 months ago! I sold a few things online, starting about 3 years ago...I'd spent a lot of time staging & taking very professional looking photos. I had to take my listings down for a while to fulfill other responsibilities but fully intended to put them back up some day, and to use those same photos...well, what do you know, someone selling a similiar product found one of my photos in the Google archives and was using it to sell their product. I contacted them & asked them to remove the photo from their listing and, luckily, they did. I think that's why I get so upset when I see things like that. It seems really common. I would be pretty upset if it were someone I had respected & had been cultivating a friendship with...

What I hope is that the buyer isn't going to be out there trading cuttings of this plant under its assumed name! Imagine if you sent off cuttings to trade for parasitica and in return, you get 'KP', one of the most common Hoyas. As much as you'd like to give the trader a bunch of crap, you'd feel pretty bad that they got bilked like this. Well, thankfully, most growers are a little more "name savvy" before they get into trading...

Denise in Omaha

You're right, Denise...I hadn't thought about that! What a shame...hope they figure it out and return it!

I actually kind of suspect that the seller might know so little about Hoyas that they got the plant labeled as parasitica, and their mother plant hasn't flowered yet, so they stole the Epiphytica photo as a reference.

Otherwise why engage in a deception so obvious, when you're selling an identical Krimson Princess (labeled as 'maybe Krimson Queen') in the same batch?! This may just be a case of the blind leading the blind.

Interesting that having your photos used is so common. I think I read in a Cracked article once that the waivers we sign with Flickr and Facebook entitle them to use and sublicense our photos commercially worldwide. But what can you do? Must Flickr!

hmm...

Greedy,
Boy... I'm quite a newbie to hoyas but even I can see what's wrong with that link you posted (and the original link in the first post). What it would cost someone to do a little research (the sellers). o_0

Planto