We have Orchid Society, water garden club, Vireya Society, Bamboo Society, Palm Society - We have a great orchid show each year, bamboo society has an annual get together and sale. Nearly all the societies contribute plants to our local zoo and botanical gardens. Most folks I talk to don't know what an Epi is. My neighbor has an orchid nursery and has a lot of Epis. When the dept of ag guy came by to certify his orchid greenhouse he saw the Epis and advised my neighbor in a nice way that he could not send them to the mainland as shipping all cactus was banned due to a certain type of bug being present in a desert style cactus that was imported to the islands year ago. So all cactus are labelled "bad". That kills the commercial value of Epis and our local market is not big enough to support production. Remember the Big Island of Hawaii only has about 190,000 residents, mostly in rural areas or the tourist area of Kailua Kona.
Rarely do you see Epi plants at the local farmers markets and there is only one garden shop in Hilo that sells two varieties of Epis for a backyard grower.
They do not grow on trees over here. Not much does and the dept of ag is very protective of native species and just about everything is labelled invasive if its not native.
Locals don't do a lot of gardening as we know it.
Carol, I cannot understand your prices (high) and why would one purchased a year ago be struggling to send out new shoots. Must be the humidity, climate?
I think we have the greatest environment for growing but we live in an isolated bubble. I wonder how many ATP members we have from Hawaii. Not many I bet.
I must stop.
Maybe some one else from Hawaii can jump in here or maybe this is the wrong forum to keep this going.
