Today I was talking with another plant enthusiast, not a PBS member, and he told me he had collected plenty of seeds from several species he grows but didn't know how to distribute them. The problem is that they are species that are listed as threatened or endangered by either the US federal government or the government of one or another US state. In at least some of these jurisdictions, it is illegal to ship any material from a listed species outside the state. My friend is a very ethical hobby gardener and grew these garden plants from seed (he grew one colony from seed I donated to an exchange, which distributed it even though it is a state listed endangered species in California; I got the seed from the Robinetts many years ago). He was afraid that if he showed up as donating it, some member of the distributing society (PBS or NARGS, say) would report him to the authorities, or at the least blacken his reputation privately. He tried to get clear guidelines about this from a federal agency but was told that the regulations vary too much for them to provide such. I've noticed a few listed species in PBS BX offerings in the past. Has anyone who has donated such species to this or another exchange suffered unpleasant consequences, either public or private, as the result of notice by someone who believes that rare, threatened, or endangered plants should not be cultivated? I have heard this opinion expressed, notably by a representative of the Natural Resources Defense Fund in a public lecture. There are two arguments offered in support: (1) growing rare plants will bring them to the notice of other gardeners, who will plunder the wild populations in order to get them; and (2) the gene pool of the rare species may become altered by hybridization with closely related species in gardens. Both of these things certainly have happened, the former especially with regard to tropical orchids. The latter objection is a little silly, because many taxa that exist in only one population are in fact hybrids, either swarms or clones; indeed, that is one way speciation occurs. I think that if only one or two populations of a plant taxon exist, an effort should be made to grow seedlings from it. Its rarity may be the result of change in its habitat: both my friend and I adduced examples of plants of very restricted range that turn out to be good performers in gardens. Sometimes the habitat has been destroyed by human activity, by the expansion of an urban area or the suppression of forest fires. Do we have a moral duty, then, to abandon Fritillaria liliacea or Erythronium elegans to extinction? Or are we free to grow them, listing notwithstanding? First of all, efforts should be made to preserve the habitat of rare plants, and indeed their presence can be the trigger for the preservation of a whole local ecosystem. However, not every seed that falls, even in the best habitat, will produce a reproductively mature plant, and so some portion of wild seed should be collected, carefully and knowledgeably grown (not just stored in a freezer), with the location recorded for possible reintroduction, and also kept in cultivation in case the habitat continues to change beyond the tolerance of the plant species. What has been your experience in dealing with this problem, and what do you think about it? How should my friend find growers for his seeds? Jane McGary Portland, Oregon, USA