Pinching off a leaf seems icky, but fallen leaves are fair game.
I usually take the floor leaves and tuck them into a plant or two I actually buy. That way I’m still paying for something and I might get some freebies if I can get the extra leaves to grow but it’s not guaranteed. I probably wouldn’t do this at a local store tho, just the big box stores.
fallen leaves are fair game
I don’t think it works like that. It’s like taking something that’s dropped but usable from the shop floor. They might just sweep it to garbage but they probably aren’t allowing you to take it anyway.
Depending on the shop, they might also be picking up and propagating fallen leaves as well.
I wasn’t thinking about it before, but I’m thinking about it now.
Is it a crime to enjoy a succulent leaf?
It’s not theft, it’s basically dumpster diving for living things. Living things that can grow in dirt with some water. They just see lost profit not an actual product loss.
I’ll say if this is a family run place - it’s still a dick move. If it’s Lowes, Home Depot, or Menards, eh who cares.
Depends. If you weren’t going to buy it anyway, it doesn’t cost them anything. And if you’re grabbing a fallen leaf hoping for something, it seems like you aren’t all that interested anyway.
Just to add some context, succulents are ridiculously easy to propagate from a fallen leaf. You literally just put them somewhere until they sprout roots and stick that in a pot. Takes a week, two max. That said, succulents also take years to mature. Your little sprouted leaf is going to stay small for about 2 years and by 4 or 5 it’ll look decent. So it may be “theft”, but by the time you’ve gotten a plant that’s on par with the one you got a leaf from, years will have passed and you’ll have likely spent money on pots, soil, and fertilizer from the same store you “stole” from. It’s like pinching a small bottle of paint from a craft store then turning around and spending $100 on canvasses and brushes
I only know about Menards because of random factoids, references, and memes. Frankly speaking I have just found out they have plants and are maybe a hardware store.
They’re like a hardware store that has plants, couches, mattresses, food, all sorts of stuff. It’s wild.
Not really. When you pirate a movie you get the whole thing. Just as if you paid for it.
A succulent leaf, however, needs years to become the size of an actual plant they would sell.
It’s even less damaging than pirating.
YOU’RE STEALING OUR TRASH! REEEEEEEEE!
If you clip a healthy plant without asking the owner first, you’re a dick. But if I see you do it at a store, no I didn’t. Cause the store made $2,550,000 while I was typing this.
Are we talking about the 450 square meter store that looks like an industrial warehouse, or the 12 square meter handcrafted-everything boutique?
Cause if it’s the former, I didn’t see you shoplift a whole ass plant and if it’s the latter and I see you clip the tiniest part of a plant, I’m calling you out loudly.
It’s a dick move to pinch leaves if for no other reason that someone else may want to buy that plant, and you’re damaging it. Enough people do it, it’s a dead plant.
Leaves fallen to the floor? Boutique or not, fair game. If you’re willing to propagate from a leaf, you’re probably not going to be buying whole plants anyway, and it doesn’t hurt the store.
Imagine going to the hardware store and someone calls it a fucking “boutique”. It’s just Ace Hardware, calm down. Robert, the guy with the nose ring over there, didn’t really craft that screwdriver by hand, either. Fuckin’ liar. Yeah I’m talking about you, the fuck you gonna do about it? Next time I see you explaining how you ‘create lightbulbs with love’, I’m lighting your car on fire. Don’t think I won’t!
Anyway, what were we - oh yeah. Ace Hardware. Now impeccably posh, I guess.
Imagine going to the hardware store and someone calls it a fucking “boutique”.
No one ever did that, they’re talking about a garden center you know where you get plants a hardware store is where you get bits of wood, some spare drain pipe and fork handles.
What Ace hardware? We don’t have those in my country.
There’s exactly two types of flower stores I see around here. The gigantic chains where everything is sterile and the tiny boutiques where either the owner is the only employee, or maybe they have like 1-2 extra employees so they can stay open more than 5x8 and actually take vacations. And yeah, some hardware stores also have flowers, but I’d categorize those together with the former.