Sellers from Asia on eBay

[JPB]

I notice a growing number of Pleione-sellers from Asia. I'm reluctant to buy from them as the source of these plants in unknown. They may be wild-collected in a irresponible way? How are the CITES rules for trading these?

Any experiences, or opinions?

Thanks, Hans

[Maggi Young]

Hans, for pleiones as for other orchids the CITES regulations apply..... I would be very  doubtful as to whether there was any chance of these plants being legally sold. I am not saying it is impossible... merely extremely unlikely.

Personally I would have no part of this trade. 

Main CITES website: http://www.cites.org/

Countries contracting to CITES: http://www.cites.org/eng/disc/parties/alphabet.shtml

[Pascal B]

Hans,

None of the Asian sellers as far as I know sell them with proper Cites-certification, under Cites regulations the only way high numbers of plants can be collected from the wild is because of salvage due to development plans or similar and then the plants have to stay in the country of origin and replanted. You can ask for a Cites certificate from the sellers to be absolutley sure but you probably get no reply or a fake one.

But then again, it is no guarantee a Pleione bought from a European nursery is "clean" either because that nursery could have bought it from a Chinese source and re-sells it at a higher price to you. When there is money to be made there is trade and double standards. Only the "guilt" then lies with the nursery and not you.

Let's face it, most stockplants of Pleione from reputable sources of which we buy the x-generation sidebulbs were originally collected from the wild prior to the implementation of Cites.  Being "legal" is determined by a point in time, it is just that the scale of collecting was smaller in the past (and therefore more "responsible"). If you want to have the "morally cleanest" plants there is no other way than go for the seed-grown sources from the West. But because the prices of these plants are usually high many opt for the cheaper wild collected plants. So the challenge lies in getting propagated stocks at affordable prices on the market and the Asian sellers are soon enough out of business. Unfortunately I do not see much progress on that front.

PS. It is a matter of how far you want to push it as far as legality, even wild collected seeds on the Seedex of the SRGC, AGS or some of the commerical seedlists frequently discussed and promoted on the forum, are stricly speaking not legal if collected without a permit in a country that has signed the Convention of Biodiversity, Cites or not. Many people only have heard of Cites but not the CBD and the CBD also applies to seeds. China is nowadays very difficult to collect with a permit from, they simply don't issue one so if you grow recently collected seeds from China of, let's say a Gentian, they are likely not "legal".

[Jeff Hutchings]

This is a problem that I find annoying as ebay do not seem to be interested in removing such sellers from their site. They do not allow the sale of any livestock so it would not be difficult to implement the same requirement for orchids from outside the EU. I have given CITES UK information on a number of occasions over the past three years and it is only recently I heard that they confiscated a parcel from China containing orchids but the declaration said "childrens toys".

It is a pity that there are still a few UK collectors buying from the Chinese. These sellers will only survive as long as people are prepared to buy from them.

[PeterT]

I have never yet used my ebay account, however I have been looking at what is available. One seller canbeijing lists some very tempting plants and somewhere in their sales blurb  I definately found a referance to cites documentation. Can any one enlighten me further???

[mickeymuc]

Hi Hans,

This seller is somewhat indifferent as he sells both apparently wild collected plants as well as cultivated selections of some orchids. Still I'm sure his Pleiones and other orchids are wild collected.
Concerning some of the statements above I don't totally agree - I have no problem buying Pleiones that are the offspring of bulbs collectes 30 or 50 years ago - I think this is a totally different thing than buying Pleiones from wild collection, especially as there are nursery-propagated plants available. Some species like maculata are furthermore said to be very difficult plants if wild collected and much easier to grow if they are seed-propagated plants (at least that's what Paul Christian says on his website). I'd rather not buy those wild collected plants but stick to hybrids and some of the easeier species for a start - those ones are readily available from nurseries that are known to propagate their plants.

[Pascal B]

One has to ask why people still buy Pleione and Cypripedium from these E-bay sellers and the answer is very short: low prices. Even if the buyers know the plants are often wrongly named, of poor quality or know they are taken from the wild and 95% of the species are already available here, properly named and healthy. If Western nurseries would produce plants at the same or competitive prices, less people would buy on E-bay from Chinese sellers, it is as simple as that. Whether that is feasible in a niche market is another question but at least we all have the obligation to try to propagate them at affordable prices. How come hybrids are generally cheaper than species for instance?

When I see the sometimes absurd prices in catalogues it is no wonder the Chinese can still find people to buy from them. And that not only apllies to Pleione but also to Lilium, Nomocharis, Arisaema, Fritillaria and lots of other genera. Just because all orchids are on list A does not mean some plants not on it are less threatened, to the contrary. I know plenty of orchids that are weeds and don't have to be on it and plenty of other plants that definitely SHOULD be on it but are not. It is a political instrument in my view, Cites has rarely saved a plant from extinction. Look at the recent decision to not put tuna on the Cites list despite the fact that all experts agree it should.......

@Michael, how do you know where the mother plant came from of the stock you buy? If it was wild collected 30 years ago or 5 years ago? Do you have any control on that? And can you believe the nursery when they say it is cultivated? Origin of plants gets blurred very fast is my experience. Just like principles.

[Slug Killer]

I have never yet used my eBay account, however I have been looking at what is available. One seller canbeijing lists some very tempting plants and somewhere in their sales blurb  I definately found a referance to cites documentation. Can any one enlighten me further???

I don't think you have any chance at all of getting CITES documentation for any plants sold from China via EBay. Ask them if they are CITES registered You may at a push and expense get them to provide a phyto certificate and then find that the plant is called something else which is not an orchid to bypass CITES. I would have thought this would/could land you in more trouble if caught than not having any paperwork at all as you are then knowingly trying to smuggle plants under false names.

Many sellers in China claim to have nursery grown plants but in reality they are probably all taken from the wild and some kept for identification purposes for 12 months before being sold.

What amazes me is all the nice people leaving feedback for the Chinese sellers which includes a well known Orchid company that grows from seed (allegedly). If CITES/DEFRA did want to check to see who has been buying what it would take all of five minutes to get lists of all the peoples usernames and countries they are from that had imported plants illegally thanks to leaving feedback. You may as well write in the feedback 'I smuggled plants in to the country and want to tell everyone'.
 
I sell quite a lot on EBay and can therefore put eBay usernames to real names from people that have bought from me and can therefore recognise many who are buying from China as well Some you would be very surprised at.

[PeterT]

Thankyou David,
I asked for information here because the thread existed, and because I understand orchids to be coverd more or less universally by CITES, the seller I was looking at dealing in them. The actual plants tempting me however, were not to the best of my knowledge, CITES.
I was caught out once by a list reccomended to me 8 years ago by a very well respected bulb grower, the same bulb grower then found out that the supplier was 'black listed' and warned me. The plants arrived the following week. I contacted the RBG Edinburgh 3 times to ask what I should do with the plants. I never heard back from them. I am still growing all but one of the plants from that order and have done my best to distribute them in order to undermine the trade in wild dug plants.
I agree with the comments about CITES being applied to species quite irrationally, but were I to start serious orchid growing I should not be interested in buying wild material of anything that could be obtained from cultivation, especially if there might be any chance of the wild populations being vulnerable to over collection. The same applies to plants other than orchids and I believe the best way, as mentioned earlier in the thread, of undermining the trade in wild material is for growers of rare plants to make them available as quickley as practical. What interested me about this seller was the mention of certification, suggesting the plants were cultivated.
I certainly agree that looking at lists and collectors, seeing other growers lables, seed lists and so on, a lot of information can be gleaned about the sources of rare plants!

One point I think should be raised, I may be mistaken but I believe in checking import restrictions to either the USA or Australia I remember a description of the plants to which CITES applied. Any registerd clone  named and cultivated is free from CITES restriction. Therefor Galanthus "Wendy's Gold" or " Warham" should be free from CITES restriction, the explanation for this was to encorage the circulation of cultivated stock in order to remove the threat to wild populations from collection. Is my memory at fault ? Can any one confirm or deny this?

[winwen]

The main problem with the chinese sellers -and this does not only refer to the sellers on eBay- are not the few plants that they sell on eBay. It is the price at which they are selling plants that are -at least partially- very difficult to grow.
As long as these prices do not raise to a certain level, no domestic grower will grow these plants because it is simply impossible to compete with the cheap chinese plant-imports. The consequence of this market-behaviour is, that even re-sellers buy their plants from these chinese sources, thus helping to establish these imports on a really broad basis.

Tragically this development prohibits cultivation and establishment of rare plants by professional domestic growers and so, if supply of certain hard-to-grow plants ends, this plants will not be available anymore - or has someone seen commercial offers of -for instance- Lilium sempervivoideum after Chen Yi has deleted it from her list (former item number L-79) I strongly fear that the next item that will disappear could be L. gloriosoides var. The price of this Item has raised to 6,50 US$ and bulbs delivered have become smaller year by year, so I assume that this item has become short in supply.

[PeterT]

I would hope that both lillium sempervivoidium and gloriosoides would have found their way into collectors and nurserymens hands by now, meaning that stocks are being bulked up to be released from western cultivated stock.  A few bulbs of a species for capable growers/nurserymen to start their stock is a very different matter, morally speaking, to the regular purchase for resale or bulk sales of wild dug plants to less able amature growers unlikely to succede with, or spread around, the plant.
In the case of gloriosoides I am fairly sure this is the case, and I first became aware of that species 8 or 9 years ago in a western catloge - yes one can put two and two together.

[JPB]

I'm afraid wild-collected plants offered on eBay are only a small part of total collected and sold on local markets and flower shops. Especially where the plants are easily accessible. Are there estimates of those nummers?

I've recently bought one Pleione from a Asian seller, not exactly realizing the facts described in the above posts. It came in as 'bracelet' so that was once and never again! This surprisingly large bulb came in healthy and I will keep it alive and distribute it in time to benevolent growers.

But a part (IMO) of the problem is not yet addressed. I think that the 'pedigree' of legally grown pleione's is not very well specified, even by benevolent sellers. tehy are simply genus + species names without more information. Some clones are in culture for years and they should be labeled as such. A few years ago I purchased two maculata's from the Michael Sexton collection (which were vegetatively propagated from once -I presume- wild collected plants) and i keep them, propagate them and will spread them as such. So they are rescued. The others have been lost presumably, or are offered as "Pleione maculata" only. With such scarce information, on can not see if a plant is legal or not...

[Afloden]

PeterT,

 My reading of the rules regarding CITES as of this spring requires me to get CITES permits to ship herbarium specimens of CITES regulated plants overseas. I highly doubt that if the people making policy think that herbarium specimens need to be CITES certified then surely cultivars of plants are also required to be certified. If not then why not label everything a cultivar?

 They have also come to include most cacti, Agave, Aloe and some other odds and ends. Surely there is no sense in much of what they do. And after all what do the CITES fees go to in the end? Might they be purchasing habitat to preserve species? Likely all administrative fees and such.

 When plants are confiscated here in the US by customs the plants are sometimes sent to botanic gardens, but what makes them more qualified to care for a plant? There are likely far more private individuals that know more of the plant and its cultivation requirements than there are government funded institutions that could do half as good a job in the US.

 

[Pascal B]

Cites is an arbitrary list and there are way too many tricks to bypass the regulations, many practised by the Asian sellers and nurseries. The rules are too general, the enforcement of the rules too much subject to the local situation, corruption or ignorance. Putting a name on a list will not protect it and I still maintain that Cites is absolutely useless in protecting plants. The rootcause lies in the country of origin.

The flower markets in Thailand for instance are full of rare plants, mostly collected by relatively poor people from the countryside to make some extra money. I can't blame them, they have mouths to feed. The plants end up on the local flower markets and only a very small percentage is exported, most is for domestic use. You have to have been in Asia in order to understand that plant protection is a far more complicated issue than a simple list from which we can not buy.

For instance, their flora is not perceived by the locals the same way as it is by us in the West. We can apply our Western standards to the Asian situation but that is useless. For us it is a treasured plant, for them it is a weed. Or a source of income or a medicine. Especially in China lots of rare plants are used as medicine and the collection for medicine most likely far exceeds the collection for horticultural export. Many Fritillaria are collected for medicine just like Arisaema and Podophyllum. Rarely these "medicines" are farmed simply because the demand is not big enough and the wild populations still can supply the demand. When that stops it is usually too late.

Exception might be Helleborus thibetanus which was virtually unknown in cultivation in the West but in China has been farmed for years on quite a large scale so most Helleborus thibetanus we buy might actually not be collected from the wild. But there is no guarantee. Just like there is no quarantee the plants we buy from Western nurseries are "clean" and not resold under false pretences. I have no illusion I can take their word for it nor that I have the illusion I can stop or decrease wild collecting by not bying from Chinese sellers simply because there is so much more going on than E-bay. Things that have to be sorted out locally. And controlled by legislation.

But...., whether we like it or not, we have to realise that these wild collected exports have increased the range of plants we grow & our knowledge about them immensely. That does not make it right but it is a fact we don't complain about. Just like a lot of us grow descendants of these wild collected plants. Sometimes without realising it. But also sometimes ignoring it and I have seen several plants winning prices on the showbench that only could have come from Chen Yi. Admired by many and put on their "want"-list after seeing these plants but no comments made on the origin.

The local culture, the legislation, the ecological awareness (or lack of it), poverty, economic growth, corruption, they all contribute to the decline in numbers of plants. Horticultural export of course is a factor in this but in my view not as big as many think it is, habitat destruction is a much bigger thread. And that is still mostly a local issue we have very little influence on. Cites does not help in that respect and the Cites fees, like Aaron said, are not used to actively protect the plants in their habitat but are used to keep the bureaucracy running. The response of many people to things connected to Cites is usually based on emotion rather than facts.

The only way we can help with habitat destruction is to not buy products that were made with palmoil from the "wrong" plantations (how many people check that when they buy soap?) or buy FSC hardwood. Things like that. Or become member of the WWF.

In the past I would not have bought such plants but having travelled extensively in Asia I am not so sure anymore. For some plants cultivation seems to be the only hope of survival, as sad as it seems. Of course that is no argument or excuse to start buying from these E-bay sellers but only this week I was notified that a small Amorphophallus species (Am. pusillus) that was given to me by Leiden Botanic Garden years back might actually be one of the few surviving plants of it left in the world as the distribution range was very narrow and the holotype locality in S Vietnam was completely destroyed due to development. Makes you think.... Not everything is black or white.

[PeterT]

I pretty much agree with everything in your last post Pascal, and I do in fact read the ingredients on soap, It is very hard to even get toothpaste without palmoil! let alone soap.

I had a look at some of the regulations of CITES and there are exceptions for various plant genera that have been artificially propagated including some flasked orchids, the definition of artificially propagated was pretty general incuding "tilled soil" "potted plants" "grown from division", the genera also included Schlumbergia and Cycleman persicum cultivars! Though sensible, clearly these exceptions are comercially driven to facilitate the sale of plants in the florists industry.
Hybreds of plants in apendice 2 are also exempt it seems
Cites does apply to dried specimins just as it applies to dead elephants, however there is an element of 'loop hole' for accademic institutions.