Here & There

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

In recent years, a steady stream of Chinese herbs have been added, a result of Conrad Richter’s personal interest, as well as market trends. He’s particularly proud of two of this year’s introductions: ma huang (Ephedra sinica), “a very important medicinal herb,” though controversial, whose seeds were brought in from Mongolia; and rehmannia (R. glutinosa), which Conrad cites as one of the most important tonic herbs in Chinese medicine.

Richters’ staff includes a full time Chinese herbal researcher, Lisa Li, to track down elusive plants. A current quest is for Chinese rhubarb, “a real mystery,” according to Richter. All kinds of plants from Tibet and China have been brought in and studied, but the right one hasn’t turned up yet, he sighs.

Passion for research

Herbal research is something of a passion for Richter—he has a master’s degree in botany. The company has funded plant propagation studies and was involved in early work on feverfew and migraines. Richters provided ‘Frensham’ lemon geranium plants for a landmark university experiment that showed these herbs could remove heavy metals such as lead from the soil.

Ironically, the Richters never intended to go into the herb business. Back in 1967, Richter’s mother and father, Waltraut and Otto, bought a small greenhouse operation, planning to establish a flower and garden center.

“My mother being of German descent, herbs were second nature to her,” Richter recalls. “She had her plants sitting in a corner, grown from seed brought over from Germany, and people asked about them.”

Waltraut was always happy to talk about her beloved herbs and, over time and a move to a new location, they became a bigger and bigger part of the business. In the mid-1980s, the Richters stopped selling other plants to concentrate on herbs. A few years later, they expanded their clientele to include commercial growers.

A source of herbal lore

Almost from the beginning, a catalog was part of the picture. The first one went out in 1970 from a handwritten mailing list. Today, the computerized catalog, packed with fascinating herbal lore, goes out to hundreds of thousands of people each year. Every plant sold is grown in Richters’ greenhouses—43,000 square feet of them—or on its twenty-three-acre, Zone 5, site.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print