i’ve received wrong trees a few times already. it’s good when the nursery gives you a refund, especially if they were expensive trees but i doubt i will receive a refund for these two particular cases.
i had ordered a brazos belle avocado tree from Top Tropicals and i noticed the leaves did not have an anise smell when ripped/crushed. i didn’t think much of it until i ordered another brazos belle from Sorelle Farms and the leaves looked different and had an anise smell. this is the one from Top Tropicals. it has rounded leaves, new leaf growth is reddish brown and there is no scent to the leaves when crushed. i have no clue what variety it is but i am pretty sure it is not a cold hardy Mexican variety.
here is the one from Sorelle Farms. it has narrower, pointy leaves, new leaf growth is light green and the leaves have an anise smell when crushed.
i probably will not be ordering trees from Top Tropicals anymore after this. their trees are expensive and small and sending me the wrong tree was the last straw for me.
another example is a banana plant i ordered from Green Dreams last year. i ordered a tissue culture veinte cohol (it came with a large pup which was nice), planted it last autumn and watched it grow. recently, as it got closer to 6 feet (the pseudostem) i started to wonder if this was truly veinte cohol, it did not look like other veinte cohols i saw online that were short and had black on their pseudostems. i posted a pic of the banana plant online in a FB banana group and i got several responses saying it’s not veinte cohol. here’s the mystery banana.
i won’t know if it is veinte cohol until it fruits. so if it turns out not to be veinte cohol, i seriously doubt Green Dreams will give me a refund after almost a year. i’ve also read tissue culture “veinte cohol” is often mislabelled. i just have to wait and find out what this variety is.
I got that same mislabeled “Brazos Belle” way back in 2020, though I think I bought it from Fast Growing Trees, maybe it was Top Tropicals. I can’t find the order confirmation email, but it was one of those overpriced online nurseries. I ended up grafting a few other varieties onto the tree and now it’s one of my larger in-ground greenhouse trees. I never figured out what it actually was.
i’ve never ordered from Fast Growing Trees because their prices are insane. i think i am going to give this one away because i only want cold hardy Mexican avocado trees that i can grow in the ground. the Sorelle Farms brazos belle is grafted onto Lula. I asked A Natural Farm about their brazos belle and they graft onto Waldin which is less cold hardy than Lula. i would have ordered from A Natural Farm instead since i have heard good things about them but it’s stupid to graft onto Waldin when you buy a brazos belle and the rootstock is only hardy to the low 30s. but many other nurseries here in FL don’t know the actual rootstocks because i think they don’t do their own grafting and just get them from wholesalers.
i forgot to mention the Sorelle Farms brazos belle came with 1 fruit which matched online pics of brazos belle avocados, with its long neck. the fruit aborted unfortunately.
Sorry you received the wrong trees. It is such a disappointment when that happens.
I have an apple tree I bought from a big nursery back in 2016 that was suppose to be one type of apple. It was even labeled correctly for what I ordered. When it started producing apples (2021) the apples were no where close to the apple variety is was supposed to be. It was not the right color nor ripening time. I wanted the same apple tree from them as a replacement. It was put on back order. So this year, after I contacted then AGAIN asking about this apple tree, they finally told me this apple variety was not going to be available any longer. So I just asked them for a refund. Of course it will be a 6-8 week wait before they issue a refund. Not sure why it takes them that long. It seems like that is the typical answer any more. We want the customer’s money NOW! A refund from them, well, we will get it back to you whenever.
I’m growing a banana from Fast Growing Trees my friend bought as an Ice Cream Banana but it’s not and he spend big bucks on it like 5 years ago. He was shocked when I told him it wasn’t an ICB. Anyways I’m glad it’s not a ICB because they’re too big.
it’s a bummer. at least they are giving you a refund. i have also bought a lot of bare root fruit trees that i planted last year and this year and it will be several years til they fruit so i won’t know for a while if i actually have the correct trees.
If they give you the wrong fruit contact them as soon as you know for sure. Or if you think they gave you the wrong fruit contact them now and see what they want you to do. I would contact them now and at least let them know you seem to suspect it is the wrong variety.
This is a common practice among many nurseries. It is really hard to find people you trust. Frequently the nursery was told wrong or even worse noone ever realized the mistake. Let say im growing a Cavendish banana and trade the nursery for a lime they grow. They then propagate my Cavendish banana sending it to 100’s or thousands of people. Come to find out the nursery i bought it from hired temporary help to keep up with the busy may rush the year i bought my banana. The temp was asked to go get a pup of the Cavendish. He dug up a Gros Michel banana instead. Im very proud and happy with my Cavendish. It happens frequently and im sorry it does.
That is it… overloaded with peaches many years ago. I no longer grow peaches here… ofm and brown rot eventually made that impossible… considering i am a no sprayer.
i have heard/read that bananas from tissue culture are often mislabelled. i don’t want to buy any more tissue culture bananas and i only want field dug pups. but still, bananas varieties are hard to identify unless you know the characteristics of the variety (pseudostem height and color, leaf/petiole length and color, habit, fruit shape amd taste, etc.) very well.
I put in 5 peach trees and one nectarine. The one nectarine was a peach. 3 out of 6 were not what they were supposed to be. I think a lot were from Home Depot. Really hesitant to get plants from big box stores. But online nurseries. I have had too many mislabled trees over the years. I bought a white flesh peach from Womack’s and thankfully I bought a plant large enough that it flowered and made a peach, the peach was a yellow peach. They gave me a refund thankfully. I am not sure where the problem is with these. These trees are bought from a wholesaler and they are selling them. Either the wholesaler is sending out mislabled trees or some trees tags fall off and nurseries just put any old tag on the tree and sell it. To add insult to injury this year I bought from a bunch of places online and had some of the worst quality in a long time. Outright dead trees, mashed and mangled stuff. Hope they are at least labeled right. One of my go to online nurseries for quality was one of the worst this year. All I can say is make sure you check the return policies. Some nurseries will replace it but make you pay shipping. Had that issue with Ison’s two years ago. So I end up having to pay shipping which is about what the plant itself costs. I don’t order from places with this policy anymore. The ones I buy from now have replacement without charging shipping. I am down to may 2 or 3 quality vendors who do things right if there are problems at this point.
