If the particular specimens involved were being used for conservation efforts, then they may now have been made unavailable. This could be a setback. Otherwise, it will just be an instance of rare trophies being moved from one private collection to another (unless they die). Stripping of public collections (and wild populations) is quite another matter.
That is certainly happening too. Maybe more people need grow this plant to preserve it. I was just about to point out where some beautifull specimens were located in Vancouver, but thought better of that idea.
Beautiful specimens of what? That something exists can be of interest, even if its exact whereabouts are perhaps best not divulged.
Generally what is being taken now out of Botanical Gardens and Aboretums are not one of a kind plants. If it were so that the plants are the only ones there would be attempts made to propagate them in order to preserve them. It is not like artwork stolen from a notable museum that ends up in some persons basement or hidden study. The plants being stolen are to be sold to someone, somewhere. Sago palms around here were especially vulnerable back in the 80's until several people had them in their yards. What used to be a $10,000 palm can be purchased for $250 now if we know where to look for one. The old cycads will be missed as it is not so much the plant that hurts to lose or to have stolen, it is the number of years it took to get to that size knowing many of us will not be around to see or have another plant that old and that large again. In specialty plants age does indeed determine the value of the plant. Private gardens are an easy target for people that want to steal the plants bad enough. We always felt the valuable plants that walked out of our nursery were already sold to someone that knew us prior to them being stolen. In some cases we were able to find the plants later but then legal issues persist of how can we prove the plants were ours to begin with when the name tags have been removed? Unless there is a means to prove the plant was the one stolen the plant once it is removed from its home is gone unless the thieves are caught with the goods later. With plants that is not usually the case however as they are pretty much residing in their new homes the day they are taken it seems. Beautiful specimens of what? That something exists can be of interest, even if its exact whereabouts are perhaps best not divulged. The whereabouts can be told if the plants are protected by some sort of security and are marked in some way to ensure they are the right plants if they are ever stolen. I understand UCLA's plight in that it costs them money to provide security for plants that were brought in to let the public have access to. It kind of ruins the whole idea of having a Botanical Garden if others are not allowed in to see the plants or that the plants must go somewhere else or be hidden just to prevent their possible theft. An ominous sign of the times that very few items of sentimental, historical and educational value to many can be considered truly safe any more. Jim
One thing I've seen being done now is plants being labeled with accession numbers only, so that nobody steals the labels in order to remember the name later (I guess carrying around a notepad or other personal memory aid and recording the name with that is normally out of the question, even in this time of handheld devices). So no-one can find out what the plant is without getting someone to look the number up for them. Seems like it would really diminish the educational value of a collection.
Plant Theives or Conservationists This may sound strange but good things do come from illegally aquiring plants or plant material. Plants that were indangered, have been taken illegally from their "protected" habitat, a habitat that was later destroyed by other humans or by upheavals of nature. The result was, they became propagated, and cultivated in many private collections and to date survive solely in those private collections. In the final analysis plants and animals are not really our posessions. Aren't we simply their caretakers when that becomes necessary.
I will admit that many plants have come into Botanical Gardens and Arboretums in which the means to how those plants got there may not have been kosher. It is customary to get prior approval to bring a plant in to a country from another country. I do not have to have approval to dig up and bring in Fawn Lilies from one area to be planted where I want them to grow. Even the prostrate form of Ceanothus taken from Yosemite and planted in my yard in the mountains is not illegal to do as I have clearance to do it. The problem area is when the plants are taken from a Botanical Garden or Arboretum and then sold. I know of one plant in particular that was stolen from an Arboretum and then was later patented through the US Patent Office. All parties will go nameless but the person that stole the plant was not interested in perpetuating the plant but did it for the money, the royalties received from each plant sale. Do I feel that professor whom I had for a summer class years ago was a thief? You bet! I've know of a 30 year Olive tree that was sold and planted in various yards 3 times in one day. The initial price of the Olive tree was $5,000 to the first owner and a few hours later it was gone. The same thing happened to the second owner a few hours later and then the third owner just happened to be a police officer that knew the first owner that had their tree stolen. With a little checking it was learned that the seller in all 3 cases was a husband and wife team that did all of the shenanigans and they got busted. There are better ways to perpetuate a plant other than theft but what makes the whole situation worse is when the plant being stolen is not for the sake of propagating the plant to ensure its survival but to steal the plant just to sell it. There is a fine line in how things used to be as opposed to now when many years ago people did take plants and bring them into another country just so those plants could be grown on. We called that plant introduction. When a 3' x 22' Koi Kiyohime Japanese Maple of mine gets taken from my front yard, the plant was not taken to perpetuate the species as there are other plants around like mine but there are not many around the size of mine. To the right home my Maple is worth a lot of bucks so when I am strangling the person that stole it I am not thinking in terms that the person was trying to take wood from the plant just so that more of them could be accessible to others. Frankly, I do not care if anyone else gets wood to make grafts or cuttings off my plant. Jim
Even if we disregarded the fact that a plant was taken without permission in the case(s) you mentioned. It is also likely that someone had to trespass and/or commit vandalism to obtain the item. Don't you think however, that the right thing to do for posterity would be to keep a part (a propagation) of a possibly one-of-a-kind plant. One could keep it somewhere in a safer spot or have a friend hold it, in the event that the mother plant dies or is stolen. The first thing that comes to mind when I see a totally new form of a plant (a sport a broom or seedling). Propagate as soon as possible(to share). I 've known a few people who want to keep unique plant types to themselves. Often they die and the plants are lost or the plant itself dies before it can be reproduced.
Now we are talking two different scenarios. Let's say I were to walk around in the Valley of Fire in Nevada and I found a double flowered California Poppy in bloom. Do I take the plant and guarantee the demise of that plant or do I mark it and come back later and gather some seed from it? I would let someone at the Park know my intentions and then come back later in the year and collect some seed. I'll have a Park Ranger there with me to ensure everything is on the up and up. Let's say later in the year someone starts gathering all of the seed pods from the California Poppies and leaves none from what we can tell. What happens to the native plants for that area when someone has effectively pilfered the next years crop of plants? That kind of thing has been done before in various parks. What I think works best is to let me have some of what I want and let someone in Nevada in on it such as a University and then both of us can try to work on the same thing and that is see how many double flowered Poppies we can yield once the seeds have germinated. To perpetuate a species does not mean to rob it from its normal environment or setting, we may see a mutation in a flower and we try to encourage offspring to show the same characteristics. What we do not do is raid the entire crop as a few more times of doing such things and the Poppy could effectively become altogether devoid for that area. I want to work with the plant, not ruin it just for my continuing studies and sometimes whims.. For sports of trees I agree and yet disagree in that a lot depends on what tree we are talking about. Let's say we see a witches broom in Pinus wallichiana 'Zebrina'. That is something that is worth perpetuating ASAP but what we do not do is raid all of the broom in order to place all of our eggs in one basket as if our grafts do not take and there is that possibility that we have enough of the broom left in case we need more wood. That is how people I know played witches brooms in Pines. In Maples we can be deceived into believing a sport is something that in time really isn't. I've seen pink leaves on a Maple and I've seen the wood that the pink leaves arose from be grafted and for a couple of years the leaves were pink but about the 6th year the leaves were like the parents leaves - green. I've seen sports of Camellias have variegation in the flower, so we make cuttings hoping that we can produce a plant that also has the variegation that we once saw. No one talks about the number of cuttings we take and how successful we were to get a plant that is what we originally saw several years earlier. Then the plant that we are so ecstatic about can revert back to its old self, like the parent in later years. For sports I prefer to wait at least 5-6 years to see if the sport remains true. If not I have not expended a lot of time, effort and worry but let the chips fall where they may. It is when we force things either by seeing one Poppy plant and assume that all of the others will also produce a double flowered Poppy is when we can cause more harm than good. Really, not that much different than naming a plant long before it should be named. Even a witches broom may not always hold true as I've seen that also happen in which everything was cool for 4-6 years and then the growth turned back to normal. Your original thought was correct if you apply it to include perpetuating a species. Yes, there have been plants brought in here and in Europe without permission but those plants were not brought in to be sold, they were imported in by whatever means to try to perpetuate the species but I bet in most cases the original plant stayed right where the person that took the wood or hand picked the seed pods had found it in case they had to go back and get more wood or more seed pods. The purist will not kill the parent plant just to see if we can duplicate it or grow it elsewhere. There have been introductions here that were not taken by permission and were just taken years ago but the intentions was not financially oriented it was preservationist oriented. A case in point is probably the Acer pentaphyllum. How do we know the original cuttings were gathered by permission or not or do we now have that Maple thanks to others that figured out how to graft it and grow it on knowing the stock plant in its native setting which yielded the wood is no longer alive today. The difference is a way back when we were not seeing dollar signs when we gathered plants from an area much different than our own. Others intentions were to try to save the unique plant that he or she found in the wild. That is not even remotely similar to someone snagging a plant from my yard, from UCLA or the UBC Botanical Garden just to sell it quick because someone either was paid to steal the plant or they know of an interested buyer the instant they have secured the plant by inappropriate, illegal means. When we have rare plants stolen from us is when we will not want anyone else to endure the same feelings we have as it is the guilt we feel of not concealing the plant better or wishing someone else we know had the plant instead of us is what eats us up. Jim
I didn't mean to imply that it's okay to steal a tree from yours or anyone elses property. I'd be sick if it happened to me. What I was getting at was that people illegally procure plants for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it turns out that what looks like a crime may end up being conservation. That sounds warped but I can tell from your communcation, that you can see how it could turn out that way. What bothers me, is when I come across someone who won't share a great little find (orchid growers fit the profile, they like to keep things scarce to keep the prices up; more than a few great cultivars have been lost that way). There's nothing more exciting than finding a variegated seedling of something that here-to-fore was simply green or seeing a broom sticking out on a fairly common spruce ,and of course, then to have it stand the test. Kinda like finding gold. With nurserymen and collectors trading works when you have something new and exciting and you find another guy with something equally fine; I guess it helps to have something of value to offer. It's one way to spred good things around. Speaking of plant mutations, I have a variegated Gingko that that reverts. Do you know of on that does not ? Rich
OT- General discussion Plants grown in culture differ greatly than plants found in the wild. I know how some nurserymen can be with some of their latest additions that they will propagate but sell their plants at an extreme price. Look at the prices of newly introduced bearded Iris and sometimes the only thing the Iris really has going for it in comparison to many others is that is its new and in relative short supply. Is it a color or a bicolor none of us have? No. Is it a form that none of us have? No. Specialty growers can ask a high price and if others feel they have to have it they will pay the price to own it. We saw in a previous thread in these forums the price of Peonies can be way up there also. I know what I've paid for some rarer forms of Turks Cap Lilies in the past out of Washington. I know of a more common Japanese Maple now that to me years ago was $500 for a one gallon plant and that was a wholesale price! There are people going around right now snagging wood off Japanese Maples without prior consent just so the people can use the wood for grafting. I do not get nervous about that as in most cases the Maple was of a common variety. The problem remains is when the person that snagged the wood has grafted plants ready for sale and then what the person is calling the Maple in order to sell it is not what the Maple is. Who benefits then and what entity suffers in the short term and in the long run? The plant does. Then I get asked what the Maple is after someone makes comment and takes issue that the Maple is not right and then I tell the seller and they do not want to hear it. It seems I am better off not to let myself get involved when the seller wants the money for a plant that cost him or her nothing to acquire. What about the person that paid $50 for a 2 gallon plant, how should they feel? I'll bet the person that paid the money is happier about their plant than the person that raided the wood feels about his or her plants.. Sharing is not a problem but some of us have learned we have to be careful in who we share plants with. We can do people a favor and let them have some plants to grow and in many times they sold the plants as soon as they got home. That was not why we gave them the plants in the first place, to be sold that soon. Sometimes we wanted to know how a Maple that we started grew in Oregon and so we let someone have the plant to let us know how it does there. That used to be a real common practice back in the 50's through the 80's. Even the Orchid grower will share the plant as long as you are willing to pay the money in order to have it. Where things become fun is when the Orchid grower sells us a plant for an extreme amount, yet the plant can be obtained elsewhere, albeit a hassle sometimes and then the Orchid seller throws a fit about the price for a Japanese Maple that we have that is technically not for sale and no one else has that Maple. Which is more important, the obtainable Orchid or the Maple that no one else has? There is a 60 foot tall Ginkgo biloba 'Variegata' in Palo Alto, near Stanford University, that I have not seen revert yet. I've seen lots of Ginkgo biloba 'Aurea' used as street plantings here that do not revert either. Some of the more select forms can revert but a lot depends on how true the cultivar is to start with and what rootstock it is grafted to and whether or not the plant is cutting grown as to which ones are more likely to revert or not. Ginkgoes are not one of my specialty areas but I have used them in landscape plantings and have a couple of forms myself and on mine I have seen no reverting to speak of yet. Jim
A couple points. First, theft is theft. Many gardeners if a plant is common to their garden may share (reciprocate the gift please) plant, seed or source. Now in stories on TV I have heard of rose rustlers, though these people's rules are to ask the owner for a cutting to clone - the only time a cutting is taken otherwise is from an abandoned property ! We believe in sharing plants -when they thrive and especially if demonstrating invasiveness- with friends as that is how my wife started her garden of perennials. My main question is how can you take pride in a beautiful plant if you know its been stolen? (Hopefully karma may strike these people through their ill gotten specimens) jjl
OK my 2 cents points: - "Steeling" is wrong, no doubt, but there is that morality that says if you are preserving a species you are doing the greater good. Having said that, that job should be botanical gardens, conservation groups, established propagators under licience but certainly not private collectors -- I think there are current laws to this effect so it is probably a mater of leagal vs illeagle. - All plants had their root in nature, so someone had to originally "steel" it. An exception is Hybirds, but their ansestors certainly came from nature. - If a plant is taken from a private collection, chances are someone was shown that plant ... and inside job? I just doubt people are walking around examining private gardens for rare plants but I don't doubt Botanical gardens have their share of thiefs. - While Sago palms are plentiful in nature, demand could make them targets and can easily become rare in nature ... Lady slipers (probably no longer true) and tree ferns come to mind but I sure there are better examples. So my 2 cents boil down to conservation over endangerment and thus leading to propagation over private collection.
