seedlist

[Kjell.K]

Here is an other seedlist:
http://www.chileflora.com/index.html

[Ezeiza]

Hi:
   
     I think this is an interesting subject. This people has several categories of plants, among which there is one of "rare plants".

"Estas son las plantas que son raras o en peligro de extinción. Ud. puede ayudar a preservar plantas raras al cultivarlas y propagarlas, para crear de esta forma un respaldo genético en caso de que las poblaciones chilenas silvestres desaparezcan."
Translation
"These are the plants that are rare o in danger of extinction. You can help preserve rare plants by cultivating and propagating them, to create this way a genetic background in case the Chilean wild populations disappear"

Well, why not help in the first place by not SELLING seeds of rare or near extinct species? Or, why not to distribute them for free to skilled growers and THUS "create a genetic background, blah, blah, blah."?
Several seed operations do not include endangered species in their catalogues, i. e. Silverhill Seeds, Cape Flora, and others, and expressly indicate this in them as it is evident they would be contributing to their complete disappearance by doing such a thing.

As things go in South America at the present time one has to be very careful  about which operations to support. With many already extinct species in the last decade or so, the last thing we need is the sale of rare plants.


Regards

[Maggi Young]

why not to distribute them for free to skilled growers

I feel a little "devil's advocacy" coming on....

This is a question I have often asked myself about many of the Botanic Gardens......they complain of lack of staff and funding and yet fail to capitalise on a resource that is all around them in the form of the many skilled and dedicated amateur growers who have the passion to nurture their specialist plants...... how often have I heard from old friends about the work they have done to provide and restock Bot. Gardens with plants that have been lost from these "places of excellence" ?     
There are exceptions to this, of course, but I do think that there are many facets to the challenge of protecting rare species, some of which tend to be overlooked.

[Ezeiza]

Dear Maggi:
                 In South Africa things changed in a formidable way when amateur growers from I.B.S.A. and botanists of the Compton Herbarium started working together. Suddenly there were dozens and dozens of dedicated and quite well trained field assistants supplying lots of information on habitats, distribution and not surprisingly, numbers of undescribed species began to appear.

                 None of them, however, had any intention of making profit of selling rare plants, which is the point here.

Regards

                 

[Maggi Young]

any intention of making profit of selling rare plants, which is the point here.

Quite so, Alberto, I see that.

[Diane Whitehead]

Are they really rare, or is that just hype?

[Gene Mirro]

Oh, boy, have you guys hit on one of my sore points.  Here is part of a letter which I sent to a local native plant guru:

"Also, there is a powerful undercurrent of philosophical purity in the conservation community, which disallows meaningful human intervention in the fight to save endangered plants.  The only allowable option is to keep trying to preserve the few square yards of habitat where they were originally found.  I have fought this battle with the Nature Conservancy and the California Native Plant Society, among others.  The CNPS tries to explain their position in this document:  http://www.cnps.org/cnps/archive/ex_situ.pdf .  But they never tell me where their starting assumption, namely that in-situ conservation is superior, came from.  Are they implying that native plants must not be enjoyed by humans?  They seem determined to close off all routes to a solution. 
 
A long time ago, I spoke to a gentleman in the Portland Nature Conservancy office, offering to do controlled propagation of Lilium occidentale.  His response, and this is an exact quote:  "People like you are part of the problem."  His charm has now landed him a nice job with the state of Oregon.  I recently sent an email to the Berry Botanic Garden, offering to do some propagation of Lilium.  No response.  I spoke to a director of the California Native Plant Society a few years ago, offering to propagate some native lilies.  He told me that it was a bad idea to mix plants from different locales, because his grad students would get confused.  I asked him what he thought about inbreeding; his response was that inbreeding is good.  I asked him how small a group of lilies had to be before he would consider introducing seed from another locale, or employing controlled propagation.  He told me that a group of six plants is a healthy population.  I asked him if he thought that people should be intervening to help increase the population of endangered plants through the use of horticultural technology.  His response was "The endangered plants aren't in as bad shape as you might think".   
 
What I have found is this:  not only are conservationists determined to keep propagation from happening, they won't even discuss it.  It represents human intervention, which defiles natural purity, right?  But they don't have the nerve to say that out loud, so they stand there tight-lipped.  In the meantime, they doggedly fight these absolutely hopeless battles to save tiny scraps of habitat, while climate change sneaks up behind them to bite them in the butt.  Climate change will annihilate the few remaining plants of Lilium occidentale in their hopelessly restricted natural range. 
 
I have spent endless hours seeking out the native lilies in California, and carefully observing the positive and negative factors in their environment.  The two most critical issues in my opinion are competition from brush (caused by fire suppression), and overgrazing by deer, especially the developing seedpods.  The deer can be deterred by the use of chemical repellent.  I emailed a CNPS rare plant specialist and suggested that we apply repellent to L. occidentale.  No response. 
 
Now, a cynic (which I most certainly am) and a person who has spent his life in the corporate world (which I also am) might start putting two and two together at this point, and come to the conclusion that maybe the federal biologists who run the CNPS kind of like the status quo, and don't want to disturb it.  Could it be that endangered plants provide a "raison d'etre" for them?   Do I dare even think the two dreaded words ... job security?   Could this be why the Native Plant Conservation Campaign lists as their first goal "improved staffing and funding for Federal botany programs" ?  See http://www.plantsocieties.org/ .
 
Do you know how easy it is to grow  Lilium occidentale, Delphinium luteum, and some of the other endangered plants?  Why aren't we doing it?  In a few years, we could have thousands of L. occidentale growing in controlled conditions.  Why is that so horrible?  We could be re-introducing endangered plants into promising growing areas by dissemination of seed.  But no, the botanists say that locally adapted groups of plants would be "defiled" by seed from other areas.  But isn't this what Mother Nature has been doing for millions of years?  Isn't this what the Ice Ages did? 
 
I have never suggested that average amateur gardeners should be growing endangered plants.  I know very well that the probability of success hovers near zero.  But there are quite a few very good growers  who have an established track record of success.  Shouldn't we be natural allies in the fight to conserve endangered plants?  Is the conservation movement so flush with support that it can afford to throw away its natural allies?"  End of quote.

Here is another quote:  "It's pretty obvious that time is running out for many beautiful native plants.  Philosophical purity is a luxury that we cannot afford.  There are many talented growers that love the natives and would gladly help, but we are made to feel like criminals by the "pure" preservationists.  A friend of mine, an expert grower of native plants, once told me this:  "Preservationists think that if you brush against an endangered plant and get some pollen on you, that you should walk into the woods and shoot yourself". "  End of quote.

Preservation is a living to a lot of people nowadays.  Think "preservation-industrial complex".  Many of these preservationists can't grow a plant to save their lives.  Many of them are unable to grasp the connection between rare plants and horticulture.  I often have wondered what is more damaging to rare plants:  preservationists or bulldozers? 

Yes, I firmly believe that groups like SRGC should have preservation programs.  Rare seeds should not be distributed indiscriminately until a large stock has been built up by good growers.  Rather than dream about building native populations, which the botanists don't want us to help with anyway, we can keep them going in our gardens.  Consider this:  by growing rare plants and distributing the seed, you are making a tremendous contribution to their preservation, even if your garden is destroyed when you pass away.  So don't let the philosophical purists discourage you.

[rob krejzl]

But they never tell me where their starting assumption, namely that in-situ conservation is superior, came from

But Gene you know very well what the starting assumption is. Any natural population is the result of the selection pressures it has experienced. Mixing genes from different populations dilutes any local adaptations that may have occurred. And things which do well in gardens do not necessarily represent the 'original' plant. We all know that raising something from seed is the best way to get a plant which is best fitted for our garden. A couple of generations of this and gene frequencies can be skewed well away from those found in the wild. A case in point is the early conservation work with European cranes. At first no one could breed them in captivity, then someone in Europe had success with one particular male. It was only in retrospect, and after a lot of offspring, that people realised that the male in question was a mutant who had lost the tie to day length which inhibited breeding in other males.

[Ezeiza]

Well, Gene:
   
                 Either my English is barbaric and awkward or you did not even took the time to read.

                  The point is: we should not support people who SELLS endangered plants and stuff their pockets from wiping the plants' natural chances for survival.

                   This is completely different from the tremendous potential that lies in the hands of skilled growers that YES can produce hundreds of new plants in a single season. Reintroduction of geophytes in the wild is far from being an exact science but the cooperation of horticulturists have dramatic effects in their recovery in the short term, ex situ. No question about this.

                    Diane, yes, they are local and rare. There are plants even more endangered and rare in Chile.


Regards
             

[Gene Mirro]

Ezeiza, I completely agree with you.  Look at my statement:  "Rare seeds should not be distributed indiscriminately until a large stock has been built up by good growers."  And I understand the role of botanists in habitat conservation.  But I do not understand their completely inflexible attitude about controlled propagation and in-situ preservation.  Here is an example:  there is a stand of Lilium occidentale in the Crescent City Marsh in California.  It is well known that lilies are a transitional plant anyway.  This means that they can only survive until the trees take over.  OK, now let's look at the idea that these plants should be restricted to the marsh.  The marsh is now surrounded by development.  Water flow is changing; collection and vandalism are always a problem.  Climate is changing.  Pollinating insects are being killed by pesticides.  Exotic plants are invading.  The threat of development becomes greater each year.  There is an Indian tribe that wants to build a giant casino on marsh land.  If you were a lily, would you want to be in that marsh?

Now we must look at Nature's opinion on this matter.  Ever since plants appeared on this planet, they have spread by wind, water, birds, migratory animals and the motion of tectonic plates for unlimited distances.  Before modern development, wild plants were spread across the land, and cross-pollination could occur over a huge range of genetically diverse plants.  Transitional plants survived for long periods in one place because fires controlled the growth of brush and trees.  Now many of the endangered plants are in very isolated pockets, where they cross-pollinate with maybe ten or twenty other plants, if the insects are available.

What if in-situ preservation had been enforced after the last ice age?  Vast areas of the planet would be a lifeless desert.  Any plant that managed to grow would be described as "exotic" and "invasive".

We now have a situation where people with extreme views are trying to regulate the exchange of seeds and other plant materials, not just endangered and invasive species.   We as gardeners should study these issues as they arise, and make our lawmakers aware of our opinions.  See "Seed Germination Theory and Practice", by Norman Deno, professor emeritus of Chemistry, chapter 17, "Endangered Species and Conservation".  Also, see http://www.geocities.com/nowhitelist/who.html.  If we don't express ourselves, unreasonable people will make our decisions for us.  And I am going to stop ranting NOW and go water my seedlings.

[rob krejzl]

Gene,

In-situ preservation is an ideal, to be used alongside other strategies. I’m sure we’d all rather see tigers preserved in a zoo than totally extinct (and with lilies we now have a species, L. nobilissimum, that according to Arakawa’s article in the latest Lilies & Related Plants is extinct in the wild; given that he also reports inbreeding depression in his strain, I suppose we’ll soon be keeping a stud book for it in the same way one does for captive mammals). I’m equally certain that more species have been saved by gardens than threatened by them. Yes, there’s genetic drift in threatened plants grown in gardens – but the more widely something is grown the more likely that the selection will be multidimensional, helping preserve diversity. Conservation of other organism’s can certainly be stretched to encompass ex-situ preservation – whole species of Pacific land snails now exist only in a few plastic lunch boxes whilst awaiting the removal of introduced predators; why not lilies.