Leftover seeds: Q and Idea
Rodger Whitlock (Sat, 12 Jan 2013 17:27:09 PST)
On 11 Jan 2013, at 22:01, Paige Woodward wrote:
QUESTION: What happens to seeds that are not ordered? Are they fed to local
birds and rodents? Eaten for breakast? Composted? Distributed to plant
groups or privately to allies?
IDEA: If we could store contributed seeds well, we could devote
them to science...
Your heart's in the right place, Paige, but the difficulty is that science
needs more than just experimental subjects. First and foremost, it needs filthy
lucre to pay for all the incidental costs (supplies, equipment, buildings,
utilities, etc) and salaries of the workers.
Second, the very seeds that are in over supply for the seedex are probably
easily obtainable by those few scientists working on seedy phenomena. The
bottleneck is NOT the seeds themselves.
More productive toward the end you envision would be a directory of labs where
this kind of work is being carried out (if any!) and fund raising to support
the work. Significant fund raising at that; a dollar doesn't buy much these
days.
--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Z. 7-8, cool Mediterranean climate