Seed and Bulb Exchanges, some Comments
Lee Poulsen (Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:28:04 PDT)

Thanks for those references, Max. In the Chronicle of Hi Ed article it
mentions the Phragmipedium kovachii slipper orchid of Peru. If you ever
get a chance to sit down with Harold Koopowitz, you should have him
tell you his first hand version of the story about it. Quite amazing
what people will do to get these rare new plants, and so sad what
happens to them in their native habitat.

I'm still puzzled why much greater efforts aren't made to get seeds or
offsets or clones into the hands of as many people as want them in an
open and as timely a manner as possible. It seems to me that this would
go a huge way towards making the poaching of them much less lucrative
to the point even of making it not worth the effort.

For example, the article mentions the Wollemi Pine of Australia. While
this has taken some time to get out to the public, and personally, I
think that even the smallest tree seedlings are so overpriced as to
counteract the good effect of getting them out to those who really want
one, nevertheless, I think it greatly, greatly, reduced the pressure to
pay poachers to get one knowing ahead of time, almost from when they
were first discovered that efforts were being made to reproduce them so
that anyone who wanted one could have the opportunity to purchase one.
And not having to wait decades for it either.

I think the same can be said about the new Clivia species C. mirabilis
that was recently discovered. Once everyone who really wants knows he
or she can easily get one fairly soon after the discovery, without
reducing the native population at all, where is the incentive to have
massive poaching of wild-collected plants? I think it was a brilliant
maneuver in the case of both of these species to announce almost right
away the efforts to get these new species out to those collectors who
really wanted one.

Why they couldn't have done something similar with the cactus species
Max mentioned, I'm not really sure.

Even for species that have been known for a long time but that are
extremely rare, similar efforts can be done. For example, the recent
efforts by two men in Australia to sell seeds (last northern winter)
and now plants of Worsleya procera to those who desire them all over
the world, I think will be an enormous boon to reducing pressure to
collect them illegally from the wild. A consignment of 100 Worsleya
plants was just shipped to the U.S. this week (and smaller consignments
have been sent to a number of other countries/continents). This can't
but help in a big way to have the dwindling native population remain
more undisturbed.

My criticism of the Wollemi Pine prices is that if you way overprice
things or otherwise make it very difficult to obtain one, then you hurt
your stated effort to reduce the desire to get wild-collected plants.
Another example of this is in the realm of animals. I think 20 years
ago or so, there was a new breed of cats produced by careful breeding
from ten or twelve different lines including some wild cat species to
produce a nice house cat that had the same kinds of spotted fur
patterns as various leopards and other larger cats. The stated
objective was to reduce the desire to have them hunted for their pelts
as well as reduce the desire to attempt to raise cubs of the actual
large cat species. However, the result of their efforts in my opinion
has rendered their stated objective nearly worthless. First, they sold
the first number of final litters in the Niemann-Marcus Christmas
catalog for a very high price, creating a spectacle but not really
doing much about getting these "out there" into the general population
that wants them. To this day, the breeding of them is highly controlled
and restricted, and even a neutered kitten is IMO hugely expensive.
They have managed to produce a variety with a coat that resembles
almost exactly that of the snow leopard, which I find particularly
striking. But I have no desire to constrain myself to the requirements
of owning one, let alone pay the asking price for one. Not that I plan
to go on a hunting safari or buy a leopard pelt off the black market
any time ever. But it just seems like they're not even trying to
accomplish their original stated conservation goal.

On the other hand, I'm only human. And I find that I really would love
to obtain a number of the Hippeastrum species, for example, that come
from the Bolivia/Peru/N. Argentina region of South America. I don't
want to get them illegally. I would much much prefer to get seeds or
offsets from horticulturally grown plants. But they're not available.
Contrast this with efforts such as that of Mauro Peixoto of Brazil who
offers seeds from time to time of a number of the Brazilian Hippeastrum
species, including the rare more desirable ones. For a mere pittance it
seems, I've been able to get my hands on a number of the very desirable
Brazilian species without harming any of the wild populations there. I
think Osmani is providing a similar service to the native populations
of many Chilean geophytes.

Anyway, I think I have a good point with some valid examples in this
long-winded response of mine. Or am I missing something?

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USDA Zone 10a

On Jul 18, 2006, at 11:19 AM, Max Withers wrote: