Some places restrict visitors to protect their orchids from damage. For example...Mosaic virus can be spread by those who use tobacco. Spidermites and other pests can hitch a rid on clothes. It is a good policy to ensure that their plants will remain healthy until they are sent to their prospective owners.

My sister gave me a $100 gift certificate for LOC for my birthday. With that I was able to purchase almost 6 orchids (not including shipping), so I thought the price was great. I placed my order on a Monday, and requested that the order be sent on a Monday or Tuesday so they would be in transit as briefly as possible, assuming they'd be shipped the following week. They arrived at my house that Thursday.

I was a little worried about the Cattleya Scarlet Imp because some of it's leaves were buried in the medium when it arrived. I mounted the plant on cork and those leaves yellowed and fell off. However, my order was in mid August, and it is now mid September, and the plant has a new growth on it, plus had grown two new fat roots. The other plants all looked great when they arrived and are still doing well.

Based on my experience, I would definitely order from them again.

I placed an order with LOC on December 14th, 2021.
My order shipped on December 15th.
It was delivered on December 17th.

The two phal. equestris plants (fma. coerulea and var. riteiwanensis) I received were in good shape and packaged very securely for transit. The heat pack was well located in the box, kept damp during travel, and taped in place. No damage or other issues occurred during shipping.

The medium-large bark the plants were potted in looked good (hard, no signs of any deterioration), and the plants and root system matched the 4" pot size.

I repotted them into clear pots with #3 Kiwi Bark and placed them on a seedling heat mat where they receive 1,000-2,000 fc of diffused light from a south-facing window with a sheer curtain. Daytime temps are 72-82F/22-28C, nighttime temp is no lower than 67F/19.4C plus the boost from the heat mat at the root zone. Humidity in the house is kept at 50%.

It's now a month later and they're both growing a new leaf, both have 1 new root growing, and a few root tips on the existing roots are active again.

Overall I'm very pleased and would not hesitate to order from LOC again!

I did get some bad seedlings from them last fall; fungus in the leaves that could have spread and infected more plants, but I was satisfied with their response.

Just had a somewhat strange experience with these folks. I made an order about six weeks ago, which was held up by the weather. I emailed last week asking if I could add plants to the order and combine shipping, was told "sure we can do that" Fast forward to Monday, the first order was shipped out. I figured maybe they combined the shipping without marking the second order as shipped. Receive order today, no they didn't. Second order shipped today, so now I paid shipping twice when I didn't have to. There were also some discrepancies in the order between what I ordered and what I received:

• One plant was much larger than what I ordered (4" basket vs 2" net pot). Cool!
• One plant was packed up against the heat pack (which by this point was unnecessary, but they included and charged me for anyways) and looking wilty
• One plant was smaller than expected
• One plant was a bit smaller than expected and had a black spot on the leaf (fungus?)
• The last two plants were exactly what I was expecting and looked awesome
• Two plants were missing from the order but I was refunded the morning the order shipped

I reached out to them about each of these, with pictures, and received this response. I also asked if I got so many substitutions and missing plants because my order was waiting to ship for so long:

• "I try to be fair to all of my customers, so fill orders in the order that they are received allowing for weather conditions. That is why I was not able to combine your orders" (then why did you say you could last week?) "We fill orders in the order received, so you are right that the larger plants go first."
• Apologizes for the wilty plant and says he will refund if it dies
• "We grow species and not all plants are the same size"
• He doesn't know what the black spot is but suggests I cut if off if I'm concerned

There were also a few somewhat choice comments suggesting I order from a different nursery if my expectations are so high. All in all, not what I was expecting from a nursery that people seem to have had really good experiences with. I don't think I would order from them again in the winter especially since the way their system seems to work currently it caused me to get plants that are below their average quality.

I don't think it's a good idea to order any plants during cold nor hot weather. It's hard to resist but now I do.

LOC is not a one-person operation. The person who committed to combining orders and the one who packaged them may not have communicated well, and the response may have been a “CYA” effort.

The “maybe you should order from elsewhere” comment is an odd reaction. I have only had a similar reaction once - but mine was “don’t even think of ordering from me again” - due to some ridiculous demands and a bad attitude on the phone. (I’m not implying that was your approach, by the way.)

Oh that makes sense Ray! I wonder if one person runs the website and email, and another runs the eBay and eBay messaging. I think the order confusion is an understandable mistake, not something that would cause me to not order from them again. The more concerning thing for me is that ordering in the winter guarantees shipment of the "runt" plants while all the good ones get shipped out to warmer climates. As estacion seca points out, definitely a lesson learned for the future.

I do have a question for the group. I decided to take a look at the roots of the plant that was looking wilty and re-pot it on the thought that perhaps it was not the heat pack that caused it but rather something up with the plant itself. I've attached a picture of the plant to this post. I don't think these roots look particularly healthy. The plant is a zygopetalum and the thin brown roots are not stained brown, they are quite dead. In fact, the plant has only one or two viable roots. I messaged them asking about it and sent this exact picture and they said "See what happens. You have shocked this small plant by re-potting it, which it does not like."

Are my expectations too high? I mean this as a legitimate question, not something rhetorical.

1. They sell uncommon plants people really want, so they sell out quickly any time of year. But I don't think it's worth risking temperature damage. Heat packs don't work well and shipping is unpredictable. That plant may be available in another year, or maybe not.

2. Others here disagree but I almost never would repot a tiny seedling on arrival no matter how it looked. It guarantees at least some root damage of a tiny plant that can't tolerate it. I completely disagree with the advice to repot all plants on arrival. I always wait for new root growth. Bad insects, bad medium, etc can be managed by proper care but roots damaged by repotting cannot.

I have ordered from LOC a few times, and have pretty consistently found that the plants which come from ebay are 'better' quality than those which have come from the site [I chalk it up to the fact that what's presented on ebay is typically a single specimen, with WYSIWYG photos--versus a generic single photo on the website].

Personally, I feel that most hobbyists have a skewed expectation vs. reality perception of mail order plants--this is by no means unique to orchid hobbyists [just check out an Aroid forum sometime...]so it can be hard to be fair/realistic about what's just arrived in the post. Should it be well rooted [if that was indicated in the listing]? Yes; it should also, at a minimum, be in the same size pot as stated; same goes with plant size, if it says two bulbs and a lead, that's what it should be. If it's not as indicated, then hobbyists have a right to ask a seller to make it right--by and large, most do; you might get a bigger plant, a discount, an extra plant, etc., all these are seller attempts to please the customer. Many of the long-standing nurseries regularly do these things in addition to letting you know in advance that there's some aberration to an item ordered.
The flip side of this is what's 'on' the hobbyist; winter shipping and all its risks [likewise shipping at the height of summer], failing to note the plants will ship bare root vs. potted, basic misconceptions of plant size [ie expecting something mature [FS], when descriptions state seedling] & mechanical damage [ie leaves were bruised in transit, buds fell off, etc.] all fall on buyer. Pests [scale, thrips, mealies] are the responsibility of the seller; something coming out of the box with fungal damage is debatable [wet & warm or wet & cold are both prime conditions] and fall equally on both parties in my book.
Standing down from the soapbox and to the plant in question, I would agree that the roots are not in great condition; to me the seedling looks like it was potted on from a community flat into an individual pot [which is pretty common treatment for Cymbidium & Zygopetalum seedlings; they go from flask to community flats/pots for a year and are then 'dug up' and potted on individually.] Typically though, clearly dead roots are removed during this process, or, in the event that there are only 1-2 live roots on the seedling, the dead roots are trimmed back to about 1", to give the seedling additional anchoring in the new media. For a plant this small, I would likely not ask for a refund; had this been a mature [ie of flowering age, with 3+ pseudobulbs in leaf] plant arriving in a similar condition [barring it being an import that is], then I likely would.