Lee wrote: >> California Rare Fruit Growers (CRFG) has a created a list of "Fruit Specialists" who know a lot about a particular species of fruit tree. They also usually grow many different cultivars of that particular species. Nice. Very nice. I was a member of CRFG for years, and I think that approach has worked very well for them. The Specialists are associated with particular fruit that they know best, but because the focus is on the people and their skills rather than just the things they grow, their system is more flexible. CRFG chooses only one expert for each type of fruit, but there's no reason we couldn't have multiple experts. Jane, please forgive me for using you as an example, but this way we could list you as a Calochortus specialist (or "expert" or "champion" or "guru" or some other term we like) without you being obligated to grow all of the Mexican species. If you think it's hard to preserve endangered species, imagine what it's like for the fruit growers to preserve rare cultivars which have no wild populations at all. They do it through very active exchanges of breeding material every year, plus the advocacy of those specialists and people like them, plus cooperation between growers and public institutions that grow fruit trees. You don't see a lot of us vs. them in the fruit world -- everyone is pretty much dedicated to doing whatever it takes to preserve the fruit varieties. Some varieties get lost, of course, but you might be surprised by how much survives. Great example, Lee. Mike San Jose, CA