> ...If there was no market in cps, then there wouldn't be a motive for
> "poachers" to illegally collect wild plants....
> ...these plants should be made more available, and with the ease of
> propagation of most of these plants, this should not be too difficult
> of an endeavor.
I agree with this in principle. There are a few caveats, however.
Consider certain Nepenthes which are rare and a pain in the butt
to grow, like N. edwardsiana and N. villosa. I happen to know that
there is a tissue culture lab under construction at Kinabalu Park
where these species are endemic. The lab will probably try to
get these species into culture, propagate them, make them widely
available (we all hope), and perhaps even help replenish the wild
populations (maybe). Even without that lab, these two species
are available from other tissue culture sources.
Anyone who has tried to grow these two species from tissue culture
knows that they grow v e r y s l o w l y. My
own observations of these species from tissue culture, and discussions
with Kinabalu Park personnel about larger plants in the wild, suggest
that N. edwardsiana's growth rate is comparable to that of a mature
tree.
It might take fifteen years for a seedling to grow into a plant that is
a meter tall. Compare that to N. alata, which can reach the same size
from seed in three years under the right conditions.
There may be some people out there who have found secrets to speeding
things up, and if they're reading this they're probably chuckling because
they're probably not going to give their hard-won secrets away :-)
Greedy people who are enchanted by these two species would jump at the
opportunity to get a mature plant, compared to nurturing and coaxing
a delicate tissue culture plant for a decade or more.
The slow growth of these two species makes me appreciate them
all the more. If you don't know how slowly they grow, then on
first sight you are not impressed by their size--other Nepenthes
grow to 2-3 meters with comparative ease in a short time.
If someone digs up N. edwardsiana or N. villosa, then 10-20 years
of Nature's hard work has been destroyed.
Back to the original idea, though, for plants that grow comparatively
quickly (many of the Nepenthes, Sarraceniae, Droserae, Dionaea),
making them widely available on the market would probably snuff out
poaching efforts.
Regards,
Perry Malouf