I've decided to add my own 2 cents' worth to this discussion, to
the despair of those who were hoping this thread was winding down. No need
to worry though, none of this should cause much debate. First though, a
greeting and welcome to Mr.Daniel Joel (can it really be him? One of THE
authors of THE book on CPs?!?! I want an autograph!! 8-) ) and my
snail-mail correspondent from a few years ago Christian Breckpot! Glad you
could both join us!
Anyways, I would first like to point two details people are
overlooking about the potentials of genetic diversity in cultivation. One
is that in cultivation specimens of a single species from different
localities are often "hybridized" in cultivation. Sometimes the plants
from these different populations are very different phenotipically but
often not, although genotipically they may be much more diverse than we
imagine. Thus, in cultivation we may be increasing the gentic diversity of
a species by mixing genotypes which are separated geographically in the
wild.
If a species is suffering in the wild due to small population size
and resulting inbreeding, it might be an advantage for that population to
introduce a few specimens from another location or from a cultivated
source (with no known location, or a "hybrid" from different locations)
to add to the gene pool at the "sick" population. Alleles which evolved in
one populations may be very useful if given the chance to spread to other
populations.
Also in regards to cultivation, I don't remember who mentioned
something like "we all grow our plants under similar conditions and thus
genetic diversity can't be big". NOT!! I couldn't disagree more with this!
I've said this before and I'll say it again. One of my biggest problems
in cultivating CPs while living in Brazil was that the "sacred rules" of
cultivating such-and-such species simply did not apply in Brazil, since
these rules had been developed mostly by people in living in temperate
climates. Thus I learned after a while not to pay too much attention
to articles or books describing minutely the "secrets" to cultivate
each species successfully. Tips can be useful, but chaos theory is always
at work: there is much more involved than we can handle. And unfortunately
the number of CPers in Brazil was (and still is) somewhere close to zero,
so I had to develop my own methods by trial and (much) error. Conditions
in cultivation may vary absurdly between us CPers, not only from country
to country, but even from house to house.
Also, I couldn't help noticing (and amusing myself tremendously)
with the interesting parallel which surfaced as to the difficulty/
impossibility in classification of "human types" (scientists, hobbyists,
scrupulous, only-interested-in-the-money, etc.) with categories being
completely artificial, and so on. Hopefully a few of you will have
expanded this observation of the inherent difficulty in human behavior to
the infinite problems of categories created by taxonomy!
Also, I don't like this "fingerpointing" at the "immoral" who
destroy natural habitats. It often sounds too impersonal, as if there is
always some hidden and distant evil which we can blame and keep ourselves
free from guilt. We have to keep in mind that indirectly at least we are
all to blame, remembering every time you eat a banana, savor a steak, use
your car, buy discardable plastic cups, etc., that for this to be
possible, natural habitats were destroyed and pollution resulted and
still will result, not to mention all the "immoral practices" which might
have been involved before in came to your hands, like the kind of labor
employed. Fingerpointing has to include willingness to assume
responsibility too.
Best Wishes,
Fernando Rivadavia
Tokyo, Japan
P.S. Have any of you ever stopped to think how many people grow CPs
around the world? I think that's highly underestimated (I was surprised
to read in Mr.Daniel Joel's message that there were so many in Israel!)
and I'm certain that several CPs may be already more numerous in
cultivation than in the wild.........