Lin wrote: > It occurs to me that photos of plants in situ might provide clues to their locations.? I don't know, of course, that this is also a problem with South African Oxalis spp. It's a tough balance to hit. Development, farm growth, and roadside mowing are also big threats to rare plants, especially in South Africa. By publicizing plants and their locations you can mobilize people to protect those sites. You also enable eco-tourists to visit the plants, which creates a financial incentive to protect them. I think development and mowing are probably a bigger threat to rare bulbs in South Africa than collectors, which is why some of the plant experts in South Africa favor publicizing the exact locations of everything. Others disagree. There have definitely been serious problems with people collecting cycads and other rare, slow-growing plants. Fortunately, in the case of Oxalis I think there's no cause for concern. Oxalis are small enough that any photos of them in situ would be so close up that you couldn't tell their location. Also, based on the one trip I've done there, I get the impression that Oxalis are pretty widespread in South Africa. Almost every roadside turnout we stopped in had some of them in bloom. Plus many of the pretty ones are fairly easy in cultivation, so there's not as much incentive to collect them in the wild. If you're worried about location information, the nature-spotting websites like iSpot and iNaturalist give a lot more information than any photo could. One thing I like about iNaturalist is that it lets you make an exact location of something available to scientists but to blur it out for the general public. Mike San Jose, CA _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…