A few weeks ago in my marketing class at UTSA, a classmate made a joke about a "plant cartel" after I mentioned I run a rare Anthurium shop and how competitive the market is. It got a laugh, but it also opened up a real conversation. I ended up spending the next few minutes explaining what plant poaching actually is, how it's affected species we love, and why it matters. And just like in that classroom, I realized a lot of people genuinely don't know this is happening.
If that's you, that's okay. That's exactly what this post is for.
Let's start with what happened
Guna Yala is an indigenous territory in Panama and the namesake of some of the most sought-after Anthurium Papillilaminum variants in the collector world, though the true origin of these plants remains unverified to this day.
Around late 2022, word spread through the community that there had been a mass poaching event in the region. Not a few plants here and there. A near wipeout. Reportedly, most (if not all) of the wild population, wherever it came from, was stripped from the forest.
And then almost immediately after, a flood of new "locales" and types started hitting the market. All traded under names like Guna Yala and Coclé, with new names and locations appearing almost daily, making it impossible to verify the actual origin or even the true identity of many of these plants.
Funny how that works.
If you thought that was bad, it happened again almost a year later. This time with Anthurium Dressleri, another rare Panama native. Mass wild collection reports started circulating through collector groups, and I remember that conversation clearly because the scale of it was hard to look away from. Shortly after, a well-known nursery began selling Dressleri at volume (IFYKYK). The community noticed. Multiple buyers came forward saying their plants arrived growing from large chunks, a hallmark of wild-harvested material, not seed-grown propagation. The nursery denied everything, insisting their stock was seed grown.
There's no hard evidence either way. But when enough people share enough similar stories, at some point you have to decide what you're comfortable with. I stopped purchasing from them. Between the community concerns and my own experiences receiving plants with rot and pests, it wasn't a hard call.
So what is poaching, exactly?
Because I know some of you reading this are newer to the hobby and the word gets thrown around without much explanation.
Plant poaching is the illegal collection of wild plants directly from their native habitats. They're pulled out of the ground, stripped from forests, and funneled into the ornamental trade. In our world, that means people going into the cloud forests of Panama, Ecuador, and Colombia and harvesting plants that have no business being shipped in a box.
It's not dramatic in the way wildlife poaching is. There's no footage of someone tranquilizing a rhino. Instead, it looks like a sudden flood of a "rare" species hitting the market. It looks like suspiciously accessible prices on plants that used to be nearly impossible to find. It looks like vague origin stories and new locale names appearing out of nowhere right after community members report seeing unusual activity in source regions.
The pandemic-fueled boom in houseplant interest exponentially increased illegal poaching, including many rare Anthurium species. The uncomfortable truth is that collector demand is a direct driver of that. Social media made these plants famous. Fame made them targets. And when a wild population gets stripped, it doesn't grow back on a human timeline. The genetics are gone. The ecosystem loses something it took thousands of years to build.
It's gotten bad enough that scientists publishing research on newly discovered Anthurium species in Panama are now deliberately withholding their geographic coordinates to keep poachers from finding them first.
The hobby we love is part of this story, which means we have a role to play in changing it.
If you already own a poached plant please read this
This is important, so I want to say it clearly: if you've unknowingly purchased a poached plant, please don't be too hard on yourself. It happens. It has happened to a lot of us. These plants move through so many hands and the supply chain is murky enough that even careful buyers can end up with something that shouldn't have left the wild.
Throwing it away doesn't undo anything. You've already spent the money. The plant is already out of its habitat. At that point, the most meaningful thing you can do is keep it, care for it as well as you possibly can, learn everything you can about it, and use what you know to help others make more informed decisions going forward. That plant existing in your care is better than it going in the trash.
And to the rest of the community, that's exactly the energy we need to bring when someone realizes they've bought something poached. Lead with education, not judgment. Invite people into the conversation instead of making them feel like an outsider in a hobby they love. Shaming someone who genuinely didn't know helps nobody, it just drives them away from the conversation at the exact moment we need them in it.
We protect these plants better together than we do pointing fingers at each other. Community awareness is one of the most powerful tools we actually have. The more we talk about it openly, the harder it is for poaching to fly under the radar. Share what you know, ask questions, and keep each other informed. That's how we actually make a difference.
What we can do
The truth is poaching isn't going away. The incentives are too strong and the borders too porous. But that doesn't mean we're helpless.
Ask questions before you buy.
If a rare plant suddenly floods the market at prices that don't make sense, pay attention to that feeling. Ask where the stock comes from. Ask if plants are seed grown or propagated. A seller with nothing to hide will have real answers.
Support people doing it right.
Every purchase from an ethical propagator or hybridizer is a direct vote against wild harvesting. Your money has more power in this community than you think.
Learn what CITES is.
CITES is the international framework that makes cross-border trade of protected wild plants without permits illegal, and many rare Anthuriums fall under its protections. In late 2024, a global INTERPOL operation across 138 countries resulted in 365 arrests and over 2,200 seizures tied to CITES-protected species trafficking. Enforcement exists. It just can't be everywhere at once, which means the community has to stay sharp.
And donate to organizations actually protecting these habitats.
Awareness is great. Funding the people physically keeping these forests standing is better.
What TLR is doing
I started The Lovely Roots because I love these plants - deeply, genuinely, obsessively. But at some point loving rare Anthuriums and staying silent about where they come from stopped being something I could reconcile.
So here's my commitment:
5% of every TLR original hybrid sale will be donated to Ceiba Foundation for Tropical Conservation - an organization working specifically in Ecuador's coastal forests and Andean cloud forests, the exact ecosystems our favorite Anthuriums call home. Ceiba works with local communities to protect land long-term, not just on paper.
Every hybrid I create, every seedling I release, a piece of that goes back to the forests these plants came from. I'm in the process of reaching out to Ceiba about a formal partnership, and I have plans to expand support to additional programs over the years ahead. More on that soon...
In the meantime, ask where your plants come from. Buy from people doing it right. And if you want to support Ceiba directly, you can find them at ceiba.org.
This is my small part. I hope it inspires yours. 🌿
Sources:
Granthuriums: Anthurium Papillilaminum Care and Profile - granthuriums.com
INTERPOL: Operation Thunder 2024 - interpol.int
da Pena, Croat & Ortiz: Five New Species of Anthurium from Panama (2024) - researchgate.net