I think they test market them here in Florida. We get big containers of different alocasias and colocasias, palms in anything from 5-20 gallon containers (but they are all landscape palms, not cool palms), big Philodendrons and all sorts of stuff....once several years ago at Lowes they had 15 gallon containers of blooming Heliconia rostrata. Fortunately I was able to say no because I already had a big stand in my greenhouse. I actually don't think its really ethical for them to stock some of the plants they do because they will not generally make it through a freeze, and the people working in the outdoor garden department usually have no idea of what is hardy and not hardy unless its in the perennial section. You see people loading up carts with crotons, Ti leaves, sea grapes, fishtail palms and I cringe when I hear them say they are going to put them out in the yard. Maybe they can afford to treat them like annuals. I can't LOL. For a while, they were stocking all these different hoyas. I got a nice Hoya retusa at a box store a few years ago, they are really hard to find now even at specialty Hoya websites.
