A species is a plastic thing, alive, and dynamic. Sampling a species at two different times is like stepping into the same river twice -- in a certain sense, it is not possible to sample the same thing twice. Each time we revisit, we are seeing a slightly different entity, be it river or species. For instance, the balance between various alleles of a given gene in the population will probably shift over time. This is inevitably going to be true as our climate changes. After all, climate IS going to change! If it were not for man-made warming of this planet, we would have probably already been starting the next ice age. Interglacials are short, ice ages are long, and the last ice age ended about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. We are getting over-due for new glaciers. This fluid biodiversity is also why we should do things like sampling a species over many different points across its geographic range. After all, a species is a population, not a single individual. Until we start massive cloning of organisms, and genetic manipulations to restore sexual forms, a self-sterile species is extinct the moment it is down to one individual. If we want to practice ex situ preservation (preserving a species by growing it in cultivation) we each should grow the climatic or geographic population that is best suited to our local ex situ climate. Even then, we are not preserving the species as it was when we collected the plants for our ex situ garden. We are preserving one aspect of that original population. We really must keep this in mind whenever we are dealing with a rare species. I'm firmly convinced that it is better to preserve part of a vanishing species than to preserve none of it. Not everyone shares that view, of course. There are a few people out there who apparently would like to preserve all of every wild species, and would rather see all members of a species dead than to preserve only some of them. Jim Shields in central Indiana (USA) ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA