The message comes in at 11:43 on a Tuesday night. Three photos of a stem cut laid out on a paper towel, a price in a currency that isn't yours, and a Wise account number. The plant is something you've wanted for two years — a Philodendron luxurians, maybe, or a spiritus-sancti from a grower in Espírito Santo who only sells through a friend's DM. You have ninety minutes before someone else takes it. You have one chance to look at the photographs and decide whether the thing in them is going to root and live, or arrive as a wet brown apology in a flat-rate box.
Vetting a cutting from a photo is its own small discipline. The good news is that almost everything you need is visible if the seller has taken the picture honestly. Node anatomy, the color of the parenchyma at the cut, the line where rot creeps up from a wound, the angle of the blade — these are legible. What follows is how to read them, and the questions to ask before money leaves your account.