PBS BX
Lee Poulsen (Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:57:30 PDT)

Jim W,

Thank you for broaching this topic.

First off, I have to second him on his praise of Dell. I have no idea
how Dell keeps this up and does it so well. One time way back when
(probably pre-PBS), I, along with a number of others volunteered to
help sort seeds into little envelopes. I ended up working against the
clock trying to get my small part done in time, and I was still late as
I remember it. And recently I was involved in getting some seeds to him
for a BX from overseas and it still took me a couple of weeks to
finally get my small part of the task done, and all I had to do was
re-package and get to a post office to forward the seeds to him. And he
has kept this up without fail, non-stop, like clockwork for the entire
time the PBS has been in existence and even before that in a previous
incarnation ever since he took over from Cathy Craig after she started
the first BX. And he's done it all for free on a shoe-string budget.
Amazing.

But secondly, I want to go out on a limb and expand on one of the
things Jim W. talked about. Yes, I think more people should be donating
excess seed to the BX, and as I well know, it is often very easy to
procrastinate or have good intentions to collect some seeds, or collect
them and send them on to Dell, and then just never get around to doing
it. So I second Jim's exhortation for more people to get involved in
doing this. (And I also want to mention my admiration of those who sell
plants and seeds for a living who from time to time donate material to
the BX that they could have sold for money themselves. That's so cool.)

But my peeve is, sometimes it seems that some of these seeds disappear
into a black hole of sorts, especially the rarer species. For some
extremely hard-to-obtain species, seeds get offered, they're all
scooped up, and other than sometimes getting a repeat donation from the
same person in subsequent years' offerings, we almost never see anyone
donate seeds they got from the plants they grew from those seeds they
themselves got in an earlier BX. I know Mary Sue has passed-along seeds
or bulbs from seeds or bulbs she obtained a few years earlier. I know
Dell has done so and a few others. But the rest seem to disappear into
a black hole never to be seen again. Now in some cases (and I know this
well) the seedlings die or never flower or take ages to come into
maturity. That I understand. But you would think with the number of
people getting these that at least one or two would be successful and
be able to pass-along these rare items onto more people.

I guess I get annoyed about this because there are some very rare
species that have been offered in the past even extending back into the
pre-PBS days on the old IBS list, and even further back to when the IBS
had their annual seed (-only) exchange. I've looked at some of the
offerings they had from the 1990s. And I've never seen some of the rare
species offered then or even more recently on the PBS, offered anywhere
ever since then. Surely in all those years one or two people have
successfully raised them to maturity and could have offered seeds again
in turn.

Let me just throw out a possible future example. Rob Hamilton and Jim
Lykos spent their own money and vacation time away from their families
to fly to the Australian desert after a rare set of rainstorms
triggered the two native yellow-flowered Crinums into flowering, and
drove over 2500 km in the late summer heat looking for these
populations and collecting a substantial amount of seeds which they
then shared with all of us via the BX. These are two very rare species
(and I believe the only yellow-flowered Crinums). Dell told us they
were all snapped up in an instant. Now, yes, a number of us will
eventually be unsuccessful with them and possibly lose all of the ones
we try to grow. Even if we manage to get them to maturity, we might not
be able to get them to bloom. But surely a few of us scattered about
the world will be able to get some to bloom in some future year and
even get seeds, enough to share. I would be very disappointed if no one
in the future ever shares seeds of these rare species in some future
BX.

So hopefully I haven't stepped over the line in my going out on a limb.
Maybe I'm just being selfish in wanting some things that were offered
in the past that someone else got and I didn't. But the whole venture
depends on volunteers, and freely giving and receiving (what Dell
charges barely covers postage and supplies plus a little extra for the
organization, and is now the cheapest price for a package of seeds of
any offered anywhere in the world), and if I made a few receivers feel
just a tad bit guilty, then I think that's okay. (Besides Mary Sue will
let me know not to ever do this again if I was wrong...) ;-)

Anyway, that's my 2 additional cents to add to Jim's post.

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

On Apr 24, 2007, at 6:35 AM, James Waddick wrote: