Plants & Planters
Buy and sell plants and planters in Costa Rica.
The corn plant on so many Costa Rican porches is the same plant that nurseries around San Ramón, Palmares and La Tigra cut into canes and ship to Europe and the United States, which is why an ordinary houseplant costs little here and the planter is often the bigger outlay. New nursery stock and fibre-clay pots turn up next to pre-owned pieces: a fern a neighbour divided, a tray of cuttings, bromeliad pups, a heavy planter left behind after a move. Ask for a daylight photo of the whole plant in its pot, and settle how a tall one will travel before you set off.
Corn plants, snake plants and the other forgiving houseplants:
most houseplants sold in the country come out of commercial nurseries, bred to put up with neglect. Corn plants, snake plants and the ZZ plant cope with dim hallways and missed waterings. Ferns and calatheas want steadier moisture, and succulents rot in a pot that never dries. Hedging plants, heliconias and young fruit trees come by height in black nursery bags and belong in the ground; the hoses and shears for them are in gardening tools.
Clay, plastic, fibre clay and fibre-cement:
the pot decides how often you water. Unglazed clay breathes and dries quickly, which suits succulents and orchids in bark, and its weight keeps a top-heavy plant upright. Plastic, the nursery pot most plants arrive in, holds water and weighs almost nothing. Fibre-cement and fibre clay look like stone and take sun and rain on a terrace, fibre clay being the easier to lift. Look for a drainage hole: a pot without one is a cover for the plastic nursery pot, not something to plant into. A pair of tall planters often frames the seating in outdoor furniture.
Why the planter can cost more than the plant:
so much is grown here that foliage plants stay cheap. A ficus lyrata or an autograph tree about a metre tall is ₡12,000 to ₡20,000 at a nursery, while a tall fibre-clay or fibre-cement planter runs ₡25,000 to ₡45,000 new. Second-hand, the two part ways. A sound planter does not wear out, so it keeps most of its value; a common plant fetches less than nursery price, because another nursery bag is never far away. A ficus or plumeria that took years to reach the ceiling is priced for those years, and a cutting or pup should cost less than the smallest bag.
Nursery orchids and bromeliads, and the ones pulled off a tree:
Costa Rica has one of the richest orchid floras in the Americas, and some of what is on offer was taken from a forest edge or a pasture tree. Those plants often decline once moved, and each one taken leaves the place it grew poorer. Phalaenopsis are grown commercially in the country, and the red and yellow Guzmania bromeliads sold in flower are nursery hybrids too. A plant still tied to a slab of bark, with moss and lichen on its roots, came out of the wild.
Roots, leaf undersides and a suspiciously blue orchid:
if the seller agrees, ease the plant out of its pot: firm, pale roots are healthy, brown and mushy ones mean rot. On a corn plant, press the base of each cane, since soft bark there is rot working upwards. Under the leaves, white cottony tufts are mealybug, brown bumps on the stems are scale and fine webbing over speckled leaves is spider mite, and all three move on to the plants you already have. A blue Phalaenopsis is a white one injected with dye, and its next flowers come out white. A bromeliad in full colour flowers once and carries on through the pups at its base, so count them. Tap a clay pot with a knuckle: a dull thud instead of a ring means a hairline crack.
A corn plant, a tray of cuttings or a heavy planter after a move:
moving house and a plant outgrowing its corner are why most plants come up for sale, and the practical question is whether it fits in a car. Give the name it goes by here, the height from the rim, the pot’s width and material, and whether it lived in shade or sun, because a shade plant put into full sun scorches within days. Photograph it whole in daylight. For an orchid, say whether it came from a nursery or is your own division. Then say how it travels: a tall corn plant can lie across a back seat, but stood upright in the bed of a pickup on the General Cañas it arrives with its leaves shredded by the wind.