

TLDR: I bought some “Calathea Crocata” seeds online and I’m figuring that these seeds are most likely not actually Eternal Flame Seeds. Can anyone confirm? Is there even really seeds for this plant really being sold online or in this community and if so where?
I apologize in advance if this is too much rambling I’m new to both this community, Reddit in general, and plants in general. I’ll give a slightly longer summary here if anyone wants more context or is interested , but definitely not completely vital to my question. Recently my girlfriend and I have become very interested in growing plants. When we go hiking we’re always scanning plants and learning about them so we figured what better way to learn more than taking care of our own! She took up starting with plants that can be used for tea or medicine and I became interested in plants that I thought would make nice decorations around the house. When browsing through a plant list book I got for free at a book restaurant, I came across a plant called the “Eternal Flame” plant and I immediately knew this was the plant I wanted to try to grow. I began doing a ton of research into the plant about what it liked and the best conditions to replicate its environment. I consider myself a very “math/sciency” kind of person so I didn’t want to leave things up to guessing so I bought everything I could to help measure and make sure the environment where I’d try to grow the plant would replicate the proper temperatures and humidity as accurately as possible. Once I felt confident in what I needed I finally decided it’s time to try and find the seeds only to find out that seeds for Calatheas aren’t exactly common…so slightly sad but not dissuaded I kept looking and found a garden store online in the US that said they were selling some. I won’t include the website here because idk if I’m allowed to say. But excited and slightly skeptical I checked their page and it had mostly positive reviews so without reading the reviews and doing my due diligence I excitedly purchased the seeds. After getting my seeds and planting them I finally got to the point where its first true leaves were sprouting and I feel like they don’t look exactly like I was expecting them too. So I went back to the website and found a lot of bad signs that it’s a scam. Seeds being sold for plants that don’t exist, no photos they had taken that actually show the real plants they claimed they were selling, and the bad reviews all saying they got scammed on the seeds they bought and were given different plants than what they purchased. Turns out all the good reviews for the website were from people buying seeds for simple plants like cabbages, not rarer plants like Calathea Crocata. So I’m pretty sure I messed up in my excitement and fell for the scam myself too, but I would love to hear input from anyone who has ever dealt with these plants if I might have the right seeds or not. I really wanted to challenge myself to grow this plant from scratch, and not just buy one already grown. I love the work and effort that goes through doing all the work of something yourself and not taking the simple path. I feel much more accomplished that way. That is why I have been so determined to find seeds for this plant and grow them myself, I know if I can manage it somehow especially with how hard finding the seeds seem to be, I’d be on top of the world. So on top of double checking my seeds legitimacy, does anyone have any advice (or a reality check if it really isn’t possible) on where I can get these seeds? Or does anyone here just happen to be willing to sell any?
Thank you all for any potential help and for listening to my long ramble
by TheMrUniverse-

2 Comments
I’ve never grown them from seeds and have never seen them, so can’t confirm or deny. However, I can say that this particular calathea is tricky to grow, and I imagine growing any calathea from seeds would be very tricky. Do you have a small greenhouse to sprout them in? Also, the leaves can change as they mature, so you may need to give it time.
Looks like dill or carrot seedlings. You’re honestly better off getting a baby plant off Etsy than trying to grow one from seeds. It’s difficult and not worth the effort for most growers to try and get seeds from them in the first place. It will be next to impossible to find seeds online that are legit.
Sorry you got scammed btw. 😞