by Marvin Pritts
Department of Horticulture
Most gardeners assume that the plants and flowers they buy in spring are started during winter in local greenhouses. But each year, more than 900 million flowers, houseplants, orchids, and other plants begin their lives in Central America. Then they’re flown to Miami and quickly distributed throughout the United States where they are rooted and potted in time for spring plant sales.
photo/provided
Marvin Pritts, center, with members of the Hortus Forum student group in a Costa Rican screenhouse during a Spring Break trip. See another photo from the trip on the photo page.
Seventeen horticulture students and two CALS professors traveled to Costa Rica during Spring Break to see firsthand how this is accomplished. Hortus Forum — the College’s student horticulture club — raised money for the trip through plant sales and received supplemental funding from Dean Susan Henry.
Major companies — such as Ball Seed, Foremost, Ticoplant, and Innovaplant — welcomed the students into their facilities. Some had 20 acres of plants under screenhouses. Before entering, everyone had to wash, wear protective clothing, and drench their shoes to prevent spreading viruses and other pathogens to stock plants.
Lower labor and energy costs make propagating plants in Costa Rica less expensive than propagating them in the United States. With the mild climate, producers use screenhouses to exclude insects instead of heating glasshouses in colder climes.
The group also visited a coffee plantation and several botanical gardens where orchids are a major draw. The last stop on the trip was a visit to Manuel Antonio National Park — a tropical forest on the edge of a beach populated by monkeys, iguanas, sloths, boas, and toucans.
The students also enjoyed a “canopy tour” where they hiked up a mountain, then descended on a series of zip lines suspended 100 feet up in the tree canopy. So the next time you buy plants from Hortus Forum plant sales around campus, remember that you are supporting such fun and educational experiences.