Terms of Service

SlowStem (“SlowStem,” “we,” “us”) is operated by SlowStem LLC, a Virginia limited liability company. By creating an account or using SlowStem, you agree to these Terms of Service, our Privacy Policy, and our Community Guidelines. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the service.

SlowStem is offered from the United States and is intended for users in the United States. We don’t target the service to, or design it for, users in the European Economic Area or United Kingdom. If you access SlowStem from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with your local laws.

• You must be at least 18 years old(or the age of majority where you live, if higher) to use SlowStem. When you create an account you confirm that you are. SlowStem is not directed to children, and we don’t knowingly allow anyone under 18.
• Give us accurate information, keep your password safe, and tell us promptly if you think your account has been compromised. You are responsible for activity that happens under your account. We offer two-factor authentication in Settings and encourage you to use it.
• One person, one account. Don’t impersonate anyone.

You own the photos, posts, comments, listings, and messages you create on SlowStem. So that we can run the service, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, and display your content, and to perform the routine technical steps needed to run the service — for example, cropping, resizing, and generating thumbnails and previews; converting file formats; delivering content through a content-delivery network; including your content in the feed, on listing pages, in notifications and emails you’ve chosen, and on shareable result cards; showing your username, avatar, and captions alongside your content; and letting our hosting providers process it on our behalf. We do not use your content in paid advertising without asking you separately. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except where content has been shared with others (such as a completed order record), where it survives in routine backups for a limited period, or where we must retain it for legal reasons.

You’re responsible for what you post. Only share content you have the right to share, and follow the Community Guidelines. We may remove content or restrict accounts that break these terms or the guidelines, and we review reports submitted by the community.

SlowStem is deliberately slow. Limits like “one post every seven days,” the daily feed cap, and caps on open wants are product features, not bugs — they are enforced server-side and we may adjust them over time. Attempting to evade these limits (extra accounts, automation) is a violation of these terms.

The SlowStem marketplace lets collectors buy and sell plants directly with each other. When you buy something on SlowStem, your contract of sale is with the seller, not with us. The seller is the merchant of record. We provide the venue, the tools (listings, offers, checkout, order tracking, ratings), and payment processing through Stripe — but we don’t take possession of plants, verify every listing, or guarantee any transaction. The detailed rules for buying and selling — how a sale becomes binding, shipping and handling timelines, damaged-arrival and cancellation handling, payouts, refunds, and chargebacks — are in the Marketplace Policy, which is part of these terms for anyone who buys or sells.

Payments are processed by Stripe. We never see or store your card number. Stripe’s own terms apply to payments: stripe.com/legal.

• Offers are binding.When you make an offer and the seller accepts it, you’re committing to complete the purchase at that price.
• Your checkout total includes the item price, the seller’s stated shipping, any applicable taxes, and any other charges clearly disclosed before you confirm. Sellers set their own prices and shipping.
• If something goes wrong — the plant never ships, or arrives materially different from the listing — contact the seller first through SlowStem messages. If you can’t resolve it, report the problem to us. We may help mediate at our discretion, but we don’t guarantee refunds; your rights to dispute a charge through your card issuer are unaffected by these terms.
• Live plants are living things. Some variation from photos (new growth, seasonal condition, minor cosmetic blemishes) is normal and is not a defect.

To sell on SlowStem you must:

• Set up a Stripe connected account and agree to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement. You are the merchant of record for your sales, which means you own refunds, chargebacks, and disputes for your orders.
• Fees: SlowStem charges a flat 4.5% platform fee on the item price of each sale. Shipping charges are not subject to the platform fee. Accounts that hold the Founding Grower badge instead pay a 3.5% platform fee, locked in permanently: if the standard platform fee ever increases, the Founding Grower rate will not. Stripe’s own payment processing fees are also deducted from your payout; those rates depend on the payment method and are disclosed to you during Stripe onboarding and in your seller dashboard. There is no fee to list. How the platform fee is treated when an order is cancelled or refunded is described in the Marketplace Policy.
• List honestly: photos of the actual plant, accurate species and condition, disclosed flaws or pests. Honor accepted offers and listed prices.
• Ship promptly, pack appropriately for a live plant, and add tracking to the order.
• Taxes. You are responsible for taxes imposed on your income and business activities, and for providing accurate tax and product information. Where the law requires it, SlowStem may calculate, collect, report, or remit sales, use, marketplace, or similar taxes on facilitated sales; you remain responsible for taxes not collected by SlowStem. Stripe may issue you tax forms (such as a 1099-K) when required by law.
• Provenance and intellectual property.You represent that you have the right to sell each plant; that it was not unlawfully propagated from patented plant material; that cultivar and breeder names are used accurately and any required patent tags or breeder labels have not been removed or falsified; and that your listings don’t infringe anyone’s plant patents, trademarks, copyrights, or contractual propagation restrictions.
• Identity verification. To operate a lawful marketplace we may collect and verify seller information (including bank, tax-ID, and contact details), receive verification data from Stripe or another provider, require periodic recertification, and display seller information where the law requires it. We may suspend selling until verification is complete. See the Marketplace Policy.
• No fee circumvention.Don’t use SlowStem to find a buyer and then move the payment off-platform to avoid fees. We may suspend accounts that do this.

Selling live plants is regulated. By listing a plant, you represent that the sale and shipment are legal. In particular:

• You must comply with federal and state plant-health rules (USDA / APHIS and your state’s department of agriculture), including any nursery license or inspection requirements that apply to you.
• Shipping plants across an international border generally requires phytosanitary certificates and import permits. Don’t ship internationally unless you have them.
• No wild-collected (poached) plants. No species whose trade is restricted under CITES or the Endangered Species Act, unless you hold the required documentation.
• No plants that are illegal or regulated as invasive or noxious in the destination state.

We may remove listings that appear to violate these rules, but we cannot verify legality for you — compliance is the seller’s responsibility.

We may offer optional paid features as recurring subscriptions billed through Stripe. Before you subscribe we’ll clearly disclose the price, the billing frequency, that it renews automatically, any trial length and when it converts to paid, how to cancel, when cancellation takes effect, and any applicable taxes — and we’ll obtain your consent before charging you. You can cancel at any time through the billing portal, which stops future charges. Except where required by law or expressly stated in the applicable refund policy, cancellation does not automatically refund charges already incurred. We’ll give reasonable notice before any price change.

Sprout (the daily word game), seeds, loot boxes, and Plant Mail collectibles are for fun. Virtual items are earned through play only — they can’t be purchased, traded, or sold, have no cash value, and aren’t your property; we may modify, rebalance, or discontinue them at any time. Streaks, seeds, and collectibles are tied to your account and are lost if the account is closed.

Don’t:

• break the law or help someone else break it;
• harass, threaten, or deceive other members, or post hateful content;
• scrape the site, spam, or run bots or automation against it;
• probe, bypass, or interfere with security or the server-side limits described in these terms;
• use SlowStem to sell anything outside what the marketplace permits.

What may be sold. The marketplace is for live plants, cuttings, corms, tubers, seeds where legally permitted, and nonregulated plant-care accessories we approve — pots, mounts, supports, and similar. The following are not allowed: pesticides, fungicides, and other regulated chemicals; controlled, psychoactive, or otherwise prohibited plants; animals and animal products; hazardous materials; counterfeit goods or falsified documents; and anything whose sale requires a professional license we haven’t verified. We may add or narrow categories over time.

Respect other people’s photos and words. We respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and maintain a policy of terminating repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.

Reporting infringement. If you believe content on SlowStem infringes your copyright, send our designated agent a notice that includes: identification of the copyrighted work; identification of the infringing material and its location (a URL is best); your name, address, phone, and email; a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorized; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are the owner or authorized to act; and your physical or electronic signature.

Counter-notice. If your content was removed and you believe that was a mistake or misidentification, you may send our agent a counter-notice with: your name, address, phone, and email; identification of the removed material and where it appeared; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good-faith belief it was removed by mistake; your consent to the jurisdiction of the federal court for your district (or, if outside the U.S., any district in which we may be found) and to accept service from the complaining party; and your signature. Unless the complaining party files suit, we may restore the material in 10–14 business days.

Designated DMCA agent. Send notices and counter-notices to our designated agent:

To claim the DMCA safe harbor we register this agent with the U.S. Copyright Office and keep the published details in sync with that registration.

The SlowStem name, design, and software are ours; these terms don’t give you any rights to them.

You can stop using SlowStem at any time. Most accounts can be deleted directly in Settings; accounts with marketplace history may require an assisted closure so we can remove the public account while retaining legally required transaction records (see the Privacy Policy for what is removed and what we’re required to keep). We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, create risk for other members, or where the law requires it. If you have open orders when your account ends, those obligations (shipping a sold plant, paying for a purchase) survive.

SlowStem is provided “as is”without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We don’t warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free, that any listing is accurate or lawful, or that any plant will arrive alive or as described — those are seller responsibilities (see §6–§8). Care information on the site is general guidance, not professional advice.

To the fullest extent permitted by law: we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, or goodwill; and our total liability for any claim relating to SlowStem is limited to the greater of $100 or the fees you paid to SlowStem in the twelve months before the claim. Some jurisdictions don’t allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

Indemnification.You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless SlowStem and its owners, employees, and agents from any claims, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or related to: your content; the products you sell and your fulfillment of orders; taxes, permits, or licenses relating to your activity; injury or damage caused by products you sell; your misrepresentations; refunds, chargebacks, and disputes on your sales; your infringement of anyone’s intellectual-property or other rights; and your violation of these terms or of law. We may assume the exclusive defense and control of any matter subject to indemnification, and you agree to cooperate; you won’t settle any such matter without our prior written consent.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Before filing any claim, contact us and give us 30 days to try to resolve it informally. Either party may bring qualifying claims in small-claims court. Any other disputes will be resolved exclusively in the state courts of the Commonwealth of Virginia sitting in Virginia Beach, or the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Norfolk Division), and you consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of those courts.

• Entire agreement. These terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Community Guidelines, and (for buyers and sellers) the Marketplace Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about SlowStem and replace any prior understandings.
• Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect and the unenforceable part is limited to the minimum extent necessary.
• No waiver.If we don’t enforce a provision, that isn’t a waiver of our right to enforce it later.
• Assignment. You may not assign these terms without our consent; we may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
• Force majeure.We aren’t liable for delays or failures caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• Survival. Provisions that by their nature should survive termination (content license for shared content, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, taxes and fees owed, dispute resolution) survive.
• Relationship.These terms don’t create any agency, partnership, employment, or joint venture between you and SlowStem.
• Electronic communications. You consent to receive notices and disclosures from us electronically (in-app or by email), which satisfy any legal requirement that they be in writing.
• Feedback. If you send us ideas or suggestions, you grant us a perpetual, royalty-free license to use them without obligation to you.
• Third parties.These terms don’t create any third-party beneficiary rights. Section headings are for convenience and don’t affect interpretation.

We may update these terms as SlowStem evolves. For material changes we’ll give notice (for example, on the site or by email) before they take effect. For most changes, continuing to use SlowStem after they take effect means you accept them. For material changes to fees, dispute rules, subscriptions, or seller financial obligations, we’ll ask you to affirmatively accept the updated terms before you continue with the affected activity. The “Last updated” date above always reflects the current version.

Questions, legal notices, and copyright complaints: support@slowstem.co. Signed-in members can also use the in-app Send feedback form.