Vinegar for weeds
Jadeboy48@aol.com (Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:06:34 PDT)

You obviously have not grown some of the rare orchid species. Look through
some Catalogs and you will see prices in the thousands of dollars for a
single plant. There will always be a demand for the rare and exotic.Growers
spend a lot of money looking for plants their customers want and they are not
in business to give things away. It takes time and money to grow many
plants. Plus there are plant fanatics that will pay anything for something they
want. Some plants can be grown cheaply and those plants will have the
widest distribution. Many plants are slow or poor growers and you will see that
reflected in the price of that plant . It has been that way for a very
long time.

In a message dated 4/5/2013 6:54:06 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
othonna@gmail.com writes:

Russ,

Obtaining rare plants has little to do with money and everything to do with
intent and perseverance. As an example, there are tens of thousands of
species (and hybrids and cultivars) that do not appear as photos of live
plants in a google search. That could be one arbitrary definition of rare.
If one were to try to obtain any of those plants it might involve
considerable effort and time but that effort and time could be expedited
with money.

Whether any good is done in preserving or conserving any plant in
cultivation depends on how you look at it. From a human standpoint it is
desirable to grow plants for many reasons, including aesthetic ones. But
with very rare and mostly fleeting exceptions, having endangered or
threatened species in our care has little or no meaning in terms of
*biological
conservation*-- we do not have adequate sampling of any population's gene
pool, nor pollinators, mycorrhizal associates, ecotones, etc. What we have
by way of rare species in our care, especially if they are of known wild
origin and propagated and distributed widely, is decidedly an *
anthropocentric* undertaking. Saving wild areas and the plants in them is
equally important, perhaps more important, but it is something very
different and far removed from horticulture.

Dylan
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