David,

You make a good point about the absence of solutions. While it is true that
too often one hears only abstract philosophizing on the issue of plant
conservation, unaccompanied by concrete remedying proposals, this is still a
necessary phase of understanding. Some of the problems will possibly never
be resolved to general satisfaction, especially where underlying factors
tend to shift. I believe that some understanding of exactly why this issue
is complex and difficult will help people make better decisions on their own
terms.

From your suggestion that we end-users need to develop proposals in
connection with our interests in plants, I would ask what is the goal in
broad terms? What are we-- a diverse assemblage of growers, collectors,
sellers, students-- concerned about? This area has its own difficulties and
it may be that in view of the subjective nature of what we might wish to
conserve, and how it will be accomplished, only a very generalized decree
can be hoped for.

It has been my experience that the incidence of direct selling of wild
collected material has been steadily declining for many plant groups for
decades. This owes to a variety of factors, most important of which is the
realization by the consumer (and the seller!) that artificially propagated
plants are stronger and more reliable than their field collected
counterparts. Secondarily, laws and regulations have increasingly restricted
imports and exports of all plants and for all countries over the same
period. For rare collector's items, demand from buyers in this regard will
have more positive impact than any government scheme.

We are not starting from scratch in this topic. There is an ongoing and
growing awareness of the necessity to meet consumer demand for plants both
rare and common by improved means of nursery propagation. But just as it is
difficult or impossible to know if wild collected plants for sale were
gathered ethically, it is likewise unknowable if the original stock from
which an artificially propagated plant derived was collected scrupulously.
How could one possibly know?

Aside from nurseries that state publicly that they only sell artificially
propagated material, such limited knowledge means the buyer has limited
options as far as making "conservation" a criterion on which to base his
actions. Because of better nursery practices and the ever-changing
collecting, importing and export restrictions imposed by modern governments,
it is thankfully a small number of geophytic species that are actually
imperiled by over-collecting in my opinion. Some of the most critically
endangered species are well-supplied in the form of nursery-propagated
plants, Tecophilaea cyanocrocus and various Cyclamen and fritillary
species for example.

As for seeds, a figure I heard recently from a geneticist is that taking
something like up to ten percent of the annual seed crop from a given
population more than once in ten years is "OK" and will not deplete the
genetic reserves of that population. This is naturally a conservative, and
theoretical, figure. I would extrapolate this to mean that taking
approximately one percent each year would do little or no harm. For many,
many bulbous plants one percent of the seed crop is a huge amount of seed.
In the field it can be quite difficult to say what are the limits of a
population-- you found some plants but are there more over the next ridge?
Production variation in wet or dry years will have a direct effect on seed
set. And so on.

I mention these points to give a glimpse of the impossibility of regulating
such activities to anyone's satisfaction-- except the regulator's. On a more
practical level it cannot hurt to inquire with any prospective vendor what
his collecting or propagation policies are, availability of more precise
source or locality information, etc. A good businessman will respond to your
sincere query.

Lastly, it bears reiterating that habitat loss in general, occurring apace
as we speak, is incomparably greater than the most blatant digging of wild
plants.

Dylan Hannon

Dylan Hannon Rare Bulbs

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 8:14 PM, David Maxwell <opbungalow@gmail.com>
wrote: