Loss of seed suppliers
Jane McGary (Sat, 18 Sep 2010 14:30:45 PDT)

Michael Mace discussed the loss of several seed-supplying businesses.
The causes have ranged from death to simple exhaustion on the part of
the collectors, and in the case of Flores and Watson I believe it was
mainly restrictions on seed exporting from Chile. (I don't know how
Chileflora gets around that, but I've heard good things about their
seeds.) We've also seen a falling-off, to some extent, in the
offerings of the Czech collectors, who now have better access to the
West and its currency, and of course they too are aging.

I was just thinking this morning that it's about time for some
subscription-supported seed collecting trips. Chris Chadwell was the
best-known practitioner of this in recent decades, and his
subscribers were not always happy with what they got (it was widely
thought that a few elite English growers scooped the cream, and we
Americans ended up with the skimmed milk). A couple of years ago
there was an attempt in this direction jointly by NARGS and the
Denver Botanic Garden, in Morocco; I have a few accessions from that
collection (and am just now beginning to identify them), but it
wasn't as successful as had been hoped, perhaps because of the brief
time period made available for collecting and some other factors I heard about.

I've been trying to persuade people to grow their bulbs from seed for
a long time. I started doing so in the mid-1980s and now have about
1,500 geophyte species, at least 3/4 of them from seed. I distributed
many of them, with collection information, through my surplus lists,
and have passed on part of the collection to a grower who will have a
catalog out in the next year or two. Some of everything is now
planted in my brand new bulb house (at least, some of everything that
has survived -- and many of the plants there are 15 to 20 years old).

Seed collecting is a grueling occupation. Ron Ratko of Northwest
Native Seeds basically lived in his pickup truck much of the year,
surveying plant populations and returning at the right time to
collect seeds. Then cataloging, describing, packaging, and mailing
the orders takes all winter.

One successful approach was developed by Andrew Osyany of Ontario,
who for some years issued a catalog called "Karmic Exotix." During
the period when Czechoslovakia was behind the Iron Curtain, he
received seeds from various Czech collectors (who could travel freely
in Soviet Central Asia, for instance, and were also great growers)
and put out a collated list offering the seeds to North American rock
gardeners. The collectors sent their seeds to Andrew already packeted
and specified the price they wanted (the prices were very
reasonable). It was a kind of elite seed exchange, except that it
cost more. I believe Andrew did this out of the goodness of his
heart, and of course for access to the seeds (he too is a great
grower), but someone could make a little business out of being a
middleman for a group of collectors; indeed, the Archibalds have for
years offered the collections of some others, such as Flores and
Watson and John Blanchard.

Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA