Vol 17 No 1 - January, 2007

Dennis in Ecuador with Tillandsia superba in happier days.
(Younger and thinner days too!)

 The ‘good ol’ days’ of collecting weren’t 50 or more years in the past, but rather they ended only a couple of years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that recent times had any comparison to the great age of exploration during the last two centuries, ending perhaps sometime after WWll. This was indeed a great time to be a plant explorer and those of us who came along later have always cast a nostalgic eye back to the time when exploration and collecting was considered a noble pursuit to be encouraged and was relatively unencumbered by bureaucracy. Our time came long after most of the world was relatively well known and only small pockets of wilderness were left to really explore and discover. The benefit of easy and fast access to remote regions, far faster and easier than our predecessors had it, was a great advantage for us. Though increasing turmoil across the globe existed, the persistent and clever collector could negotiate the tangle of red tape and turn the corrupt nature of many third world governments to our advantage.

 So what really changed in the past couple of years to ‘end’ the official ‘good ol’ days’ of collecting? A U.S. law, long on the books but rarely enforced, was finally implemented in earnest. The law, simply put, is that any plant entering the U.S. has to be accompanied by a phytosanitary certificate or ‘health statement’ issued by the country of origin. In years past, though the law was on the books, it was rarely enforced and was generally waived for any plants that were ‘hand carried’ or brought into this country inside of luggage traveling with the importer. That our agricultural department would trust the inspection of any third world country by accepting a paper stating the plants were clean, was absurd, so they waived this in favor of a thorough inspection at the port of entry. But, with the changing climate and attitude about collecting in general, the law written to assure that plants imported were disease free, was applied as a roadblock to collectors. Anyone dealing with plant importing can tell you that, though not impossible, it is next to impossible to obtain the required documents from most countries. So, by requiring this certificate, they were in effect able to stop most personal imports.               

  Some of you reading this are probably saying ‘thank goodness’ for this and you may feel that collecting should have been banned a long time ago anyway. Maybe so, but I remain unconvinced. At least in recent times, most plants ‘discovered’ for science and introduced to cultivation were found by amateur collectors. Amateur in that we are as a group not professionally trained scientifically and do not operate under the auspices of any official organization or government. Entrepreneurs and private collectors have explored many areas of the world looking for specimens for their collections or for introduction to horticulture.

 
  At our own expense we have traveled the world and spent thousands of man hours, risking injury, financial ruin or sometimes imprisonment in order to obtain that precious ‘new’ variety. On the way a wealth of information and specimens has been gathered by the collectors and donated to various institutions across the globe. Some few amateurs are also highly motivated and have done follow-up research and have described new species on their own. Data we gather has expanded the base of knowledge for many species and in some cases documents the status and sometimes the demise of plant populations. In short, there is more going on than just collecting for profit. Profit is good too, though elusive in this business.

  Not discounting the fact that there are ‘bad eggs’ out there who have over-collected some species and have damaged populations or destroyed personal property or worse. After 35 years of being ‘out amongst them’ I can say that this behavior is very rare. Most of the time a collecting trip went something like this: Weeks of planning and purchasing supplies and travel fare, sometimes at considerable expense. Anywhere from a week to six weeks taken to do the trip. Living abroad in sometimes less-than-appealing lodgings and eating unfamiliar foods, exposure to health risks, harassment by police and other officials, regardless of your intent and arranging local travel to the area you wish to explore. Expenses for rental vehicles, hotels, food and travel, not to mention the almost universal ‘mordida’ or bribe system can be substantial. Exiting the country is always a gut-wrenching journey as any single ‘official’ can ruin your entire trip while enforcing a genuine law or fishing for a payoff. After that though, it was all down hill. Arriving at the U.S. port of entry you were shuttled into the system of inspections and paperwork. Assuming you had no species protected by CITES or other treaties, and that your material was found to be clean, you were released to finish your journey home. Arriving with your plants you had to rush to unpack and care for them to assure that they did not succumb from the trip. With luck, you end up with over half of your items alive and well and that some were in fact worth all the effort and considerable expense. So what do you do with the plants then, sell them? Not on your life! If you are lucky, each specimen surviving the trip may have cost you less than $100 each. Most of the time the plants are used to propagate or for hybrid parents to make more or potentially different plants for future sales.

  Some of you may find this a little hard to swallow, $100 per plant? Come on! Really, it can run that high or more. That is not to say that we NEVER have sold plants imported in this fashion. Years ago, most especially, when things were cheaper and imported plants were in higher demand, and there were few limits on how much we could bring back, we would often take a few cases of re-sellable plants to help defray the cost of the trip. However in later years, this had become difficult due to increasing restrictions and expense. So how may plants have we collected in our 35 years of travel? We could never be sure, but we recently were speculating. Standing in one of our smaller greenhouses, at about 3,000 square feet, we imagined that in 35 years we likely would have not brought in enough collected plants to fill even that much space. However, we have over six acres of indoor space and we also speculated that that would be insufficient to hold all the plants we have produced from the collections we have made. Do you see a benefit here? Some will, some won’t.