No comments on illegal collection...but they do have their labs and nursery and that is a fact.
I had bought many Pleuthallids species from them a few times in the past (preorder, mostly bare-root). Although they were not top-quality plants, they were fine and reasonably priced. Just remember that not everyone has the condition to grow pluerothallids and bare-root plants may not be a wise choice for new growers.
Ps, I no longer have a large collection of orchids or "actively" growing orchids. My last order from them was about 10 years ag
The presence of a lab has no bearing on the status of plants. Following this logic through to its conclusion, if a nursery has a lab and crosses two plants of rungsuriyanum, canhii, anitum, or any other plant that is questionable from the source location, those plants would then be OK, no problem, the presence of a lab makes everything acceptable.
Myself and a good many others would not agree with that logic.
I, myself, am not a fan or advocate of CITIES as currently structured and enforced. Those who opine that CITIES has, and is, killing more plants that any poacher or collector ever did are accurate. Plants die in far greater numbers, where they are, for a wide variety of reasons and CITIES ensures the loss of entire populations of plants, some very rare, some forms never to be seen again.
Since the 1990's the two largest individual purveyors of plants that have questionable legality going back to the source, and hybrids derived from those plants, have been located in Germany and Ecuador. We all know who they are and I venture a guess we all have plants that have come from them or through them. Speaking broadly, Taiwan does not honor or enforce CITIES for imports. Every sanderianum, anitum, gigantifolium, stonei, vietnamense, and hangianum plant or hybrid that has come from Taiwan has been derived from illegally collected plants. You have a Paph Chi Hua Dancer? It is spectacular and from an illegally sourced gigantifolium. We are all waiting with great anticipation for seedlings of the album stonei to be available (they are in Taiwan), all derived from an illegally collected plant. No, Malaysia didn't issue a special collecting permit for that plant. But if it enters the United States, Canada or Europe with a CITIES, yahoo! I am not contributing to illegal collecting. Think again, that logic in not sound.
My issue with wishing death, incarceration, and other severe punishments on poor, often desperate collectors who sell plants to pay for vaccines, school uniforms, or a new horse to harvest barely enough crops to feed his family, selling those plants for pennies on the dollar to middle men, is that each of us have plants that are in one form or another not totally legal from the source to the greenhouse bench, yet we act like we are morally superior to someone who legally buys a few rungsuriyanum from a local European nursery and takes them home with great anticipation. These folks have not done anything wrong, and deserve better than to be alienated from this forum by a few vocal slipper people pointing out, at times aggressively, how their plants are illegal and they are going to be reported to the authorities and should be shamed into turning their prize purchase in to a rescue center, where these same critics will be waiting to buy "legal" plants. This is the "I am holier than thou" group who think all their plants are so above board, yet they are not, not by a long stretch.
So when we line up to buy plants from Ecuador, Germany, and Taiwan, ask the tough questions and do the math. All is not what it is represented to be. Buy your plants, build the best collection you can, cherish your collection, and let people alone. You order plants from these sources? Spare us all the blatant hypocrisy.
Best,