Poor me!!! :):)

From: Fernando Rivadavia-Lopes (fe_riva@uol.com.br)
Date: Tue May 02 2000 - 18:36:35 PDT


Date: Tue, 2 May 2000 22:36:35 -0300
From: "Fernando Rivadavia-Lopes" <fe_riva@uol.com.br>
To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com
Message-Id: <aabcdefg1370$foo@default>
Subject: Poor me!!! :):)

To all,

            First of all thanks to Bruce Dudley for the kind words and for
sticking up for me! :):) Don't worry, no offense taken -- it was fun to
realise that some people have an "Indiana Jones" image of me! HA!HA!

            But as to what I would do if I was actually lucky (or suddenly
stinking rich) enough to get a helicopter to the far side of Neblina (and if
I wasn't shot down by the Venezuelan army for invading their territory...)
and I happened to stumble onto a single dying D.meristocaulis....

>>>If (say) Fernando gets a helicopter to the far side of Mount Neblina
>>>and despite exhaustive searching comes across just one sick specimen
>>>of Drosera meristocaulis with no seed pods, should he leave it there
>>>or 'rescue' it?
>
>>He should make a herbarium specimen out of it! :-)
>
>He probably would! :-)
>
>I could argue that he should leave it there. After all, a sick or dying
>plant is hardly a wonderful example to have as a herbarium specimen.
>And why try to cultivate a plant that may be a poor specimen or even
>diseased?

            All WRONG!! There's enough herbarium specimens of it going
around already! Everybody knows it's out there somewhere on Neblina.
Although I'd love to see it in cultivation, the chances of a single ugly
plant making it back alive and surviving for even a few months are VERY
slim.

            My main concern if I was actually lucky enough to find this
exotic species would be.... to stick it in a bag with silica gel, to dry it
for future DNA sequencing analysis! I'd love to see where it fits into the
Drosera phylogenetic tree. Is it really close to pygmy sundews as some of us
suspect?? That's the big mystery I'd like to solve.

            Of course I'd also pry its leaf and stipule-covered stems for
some root tips for posterior chromosome counts. If possible, I could try to
pluck out all the remaining live leaves and stick these in silica gel,
preserving what's left of the plant for an attempt at cultivation. Then my
main worry would be to get some pollen off this plant to compare with those
from other Drosera. Last of all, if it survived and thrived in cultivation,
I'd be praying for seeds to try to establish it in cultivation worldwide.
That would be the order of priorities with D.meristocaulis.

            Would I be worried about collecting the only plant I saw? Not
really, since there is probably lots of it up on Neblina, you just have to
go to the right places. Not to mention several other smaller tepuis near
Neblina which are probably also home to this species. And considering how
remote Neblina is, I doubt D.meristocaulis will ever be endangered by
overcollecting! Furthermore, it surely recovers much quicker than any
Heliamphora population would, for example.

        So, anybody wanna lend me a helicopter??? :):)

Best Wishes,

Fernando Rivadavia
Sao paulo, Brazil



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