I've said this before, but I believe that Josh has a point here. If better
efforts are made to get seeds or offsets of the really desirable plants into
the hands of those, like almost everyone on this list, who want and will
take care of them, I am certain it will take a lot of pressure off the
efforts to exploit wild populations into extinction. (Hopefully we won't see
much more of the kind of stories where they put a wild-collected bulb in
every cereal box!)
I think virtually everyone on this list totally supports the conservation
of wild populations of bulb species on every continent. I don't think that's
the problem.

On the other hand, you're not ever going to get people like all of us to
stop wanting to obtain and grow all these amazing species. All we want is
the opportunity to share in the excess of seeds, and eventually plants, of
these species.

I've pointed out before to several people on this list, what I think is a
great recent example of what could be done with many other species. When the
new species Clivia mirabilis was unexpectedly discovered in a region of
South Africa that no one expected in the early 2000s, the plant authorities
in that country knew that the entire population possibly could have been
collected if efforts to protect it weren't quickly implemented. So they
placed the area it was found in under protection and there were already laws
being passed in that country to protect all of the native flora. But places
like Kirstenbosch realized that despite all that, it would be even better if
all the people who wanted it could somehow get it. Which would greatly ease
the pressure for poaching to occur. So they collected a large number of
seeds legally, announced to the world that they were doing so, and that
after they had grown the seedlings for a couple of years, anyone could
purchase one or more (up to a limit of 4 I think it was), at a completely
reasonable price. And they even went to the effort to centralize the
distribution to each country in order to comply with phytosanitary
certification and importation quarantines and rules. I was able to obtain
two of them (which I still have) at a far more reasonable price than I've
seen lately for this species from people who have gone on to produce seeds
and plants of it since then. Nowadays, you can go on tours that the Clivia
Society puts on from time to time to see the plant in several native
locales, and as far as I can tell, no one seems to be wanting to try and
sneak some plants from those locations because they can get them far more
easily from people who grow them in captivity, so to speak. I think
Kirstenbosch's plan was brilliant, and it worked.

I think a similar thing, on a lesser scale is true of the efforts of a
number of Australians along with the Worsleya email list, in making both
seeds and plants of Worsleya procera (the "Blue Amaryllis") available to the
world at large. Worsleya is still very rare, and hard to keep growing until
you can figure out the right growing regimen under your local conditions.
But at least it has gotten to the point that you don't need to
surreptitiously consider, in the privacy of your own home of course ;-),
how you might someday try to make a trip to the Organ Mountains of Brazil to
smuggle a bulb or some seeds out in order to ever try growing it for
yourself…

--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a
Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m

On Sep 4, 2011, at 5:13 PM, Joshua Young wrote:

to

populations.

Martyn

Mike

plundering in

glory

huge

are

would

that

Stan's

_______________________________________________
pbs mailing list
pbs@lists.ibiblio.org
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/