At 03:46 AM 9/4/2011, you wrote: >Hi Alberto, I cant imagine how anyone could justify taking something so >beautiful from its native environment, unless it was its last chance of >survival. What an earth were those Netherlanders thinking..... I have never >seen these little sapphires before & i was wondering if any sustainable >population survived in the wild, once the original population was removed ? First, as I mentioned in an earlier post, at least two native populations have been discovered recently in the wild. The exact locations are not being disclosed by the botanists who found them, for obvious reasons.. Second, although it is true that some Tecophilaea cyanocrocus were taken to Europe, John Watson (as always) had something memorable to say about that, to the effect that the apparent extinction of the species was more likely caused by overgrazing than by "spade-wielding peasants in the pay of villainous Dutchmen." If you have been to the former habitat of this species, you will know that much of the land is now covered mostly by vegetation that is either thorny or poisonous or both, almost everything else having been devoured by the thousands of goats kept there by rural people who maintain them largely for cheese production. (Fortunately for our interests, the showy amaryllids of the area are poisonous.) The introduction of Old World livestock into the Americas is surely the cause of a large proportion of the plant extinctions that have occurred there, not to mention violent and rapid changes in plant communities and subsequent effects on the fauna. Something similar happened in the Old World millennia ago when pastoralism took hold. Jane McGary Portland, Oregon, USA